The Mentor Who Rewrites
A student composing a 5,000-word imaginative work has been meeting a mentor - a published novelist and family friend - roughly fortnightly for four months. The student's drafts show a distinctive voice early on, then a marked shift around week ten: sentence rhythms tighten, the narrative structure becomes more artful, and several passages read like the mentor's published style. The student's journal records the meetings warmly and includes lines such as 'M gave me a much better opening' and 'M restructured the middle section for me.' The Reflection Statement describes the mentor as offering 'guidance on shaping the narrative.' The school's policy permits mentors to discuss work but prohibits them from composing or rewriting student text. The work is otherwise original in plot and character.
1. Assess the extent to which the mentor's involvement breaches the policy, distinguishing acceptable guidance from prohibited composition.
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The policy draws a line between guidance and composition, and the evidence places some of the mentor's activity on the wrong side of it. Acceptable guidance includes discussing structure in the abstract, asking questions that prompt the student to solve problems, recommending texts, and commenting on drafts. Prohibited composition includes supplying rewritten prose, dictating an opening, or restructuring the work in a way the student then simply adopts.
The journal entries are the crux. 'Gave me a much better opening' is ambiguous - it could mean advice or supplied text - but 'restructured the middle section for me' leans toward the mentor performing the work. The stylistic shift at week ten is corroborating circumstantial evidence, not proof: a student can legitimately absorb a mentor's influence, and imitation is a recognised compositional strategy. The teacher should not infer plagiarism from style alone.
The proportionate response is investigative rather than punitive. Ask the student to produce the drafts either side of week ten and to explain, in specific terms, what decisions they made and why. If the student can account for the restructuring as their own response to advice, the involvement is guidance. If the student cannot reconstruct the reasoning, or if supplied prose is found, the affected passages must be revised by the student or the work referred under the school's authenticity procedures. The Reflection Statement also needs correcting: 'guidance on shaping the narrative' understates what occurred and should describe the mentor's role accurately, including its limits.
2. The student protests that every writer gets editing and that banning mentor input is unrealistic. How should this be answered, and what should change in the Reflection Statement?
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The student's point is partly right and should be acknowledged: professional writing is collaborative, and editing is normal. But the assessment is not a professional publication; it is evidence of the student's own composing. The syllabus values the student's authorial decisions, and a mentor who rewrites removes exactly the evidence being assessed. The distinction is not 'help versus no help' but 'who makes the decisions and produces the sentences.'
The answer to the student is therefore principled rather than bureaucratic: mentors may advise, question, and critique, but the words and structural choices must be the student's, and the student must be able to explain them. This protects the student too - external markers may interview or scrutinise, and an inability to account for one's own text is far more damaging than a modest, disclosed level of help.
The Reflection Statement must be revised to be candid and specific. Instead of 'guidance on shaping the narrative,' it should state what the mentor did, what the student rejected, and how the student's own decisions diverged from the advice. A strong statement might note that the mentor suggested a chronological opening, that the student trialled it, found it flattened the tension, and reverted to the in-medias-res structure with a revised first paragraph written by the student. Specificity of this kind converts a risk into evidence of judgement. If any mentor-supplied phrasing remains, it should be removed or the student should rewrite it and document the change.