As expected, I had a handful of unhappy students. I talked with one after class yesterday, another is coming to see me today, and at least one more will come to my office hours next week. So, I'm trying to keep a good balance of showing them where their papers went wrong and encouraging them to not give up. Some of them are just shocked because they've never gotten a grade this low before. I feel bad for them, too. I'm sure if I had gotten a C or D on a paper during my first semester, I would have been very upset about it, too. Come to think of it, I may have gotten a C on a paper in my first Honors class. I can't remember for sure, but I do remember thinking that instructor was a really tough grader. But in the end, she pushed me to write better and I learned a lot from her. I got an A in the class, so I must have improved. I guess I hope my students will do the same thing--not give up, but learn to improve their writing. They didn't realize until the grades came back that the standard has been raised (after all, this is college). Thanks to Damon and Derek for encouraging me to stand my ground (Mark said the same thing, adding that hard work doesn't entitle them to a good grade). I still think these meetings will be difficult, though.
On another note, I'm glad to be able to spend more time today, tomorrow, and over the weekend working on something besides English 101! It's still amazing how much time I can spend on that class. With the papers over, I'll have time to start working on some projects for my Methods class and choosing a topic for my final paper in Linguistics.
3 comments:
I thought Mark was more jaded. Hard work? Yeah right.
I probably grade too easy, though every semester someone complains about my harsh grading on the evaluations. I think that, realistically, even in most upper-level classes, you'll probably only get a handful of people who really deserve a strong A. I could go on, but...I guess I won't. :) I'm sure you and I will have fun talking about this in person at some point.
After taking with a couple other GATs today, I think my grading was easier than theirs--while I had mostly B's and C's, they both have mostly C's and D's. But, they each brought up a good point: it's easier to start off grading harder and grade easier on the next paper than to go the other way.
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