As my colleagues have indicated, the thrill and value of qualitative assessment is that it let us loose to speak and dig into the questions that we had to keep silenced during rubric-based assessment. It allowed us to value our many questions about student writing and pedagogy. As we voiced our questions and discussed them vigorously we began to understand that the process could help each of us in refining course structure, pedagogy and assignments in the Transitional English classroom and in the college composition courses that follow.