Sunday, November 04, 2007
paper grading
For my juvenile justice class, my classmates and I have been given some undergraduate papers to grade. I'm not going to complain about the assignment because, frankly, it's the assignment and that's something I just need to deal with. I will, however, complain about the fact that the students' papers I've been assigned are pretty much terrible. The grammar is horrible and 4 of the 6 papers have no thesis. The two that do have thesis statements have no supporting paragraphs. I know that I wrote some pretty horrible papers in college, but these are beyond terrible. Ugh. The dilemma that exists herein is that I feel bad giving one of the girls a failing grade. I even tried to change my scoring rubric so that she wouldn't get such a bad grade, but everything I did made the grade stay in the same bracket. I'm not even sure that she read the book--who writes a book review without giving any actual details about the book?! Gah!
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3 comments:
maybe she really didn't read it. That sucks that you have to fail her, but if her paper sucks, it sucks. It will make her try harder next time. (are any of your classmates failing students?)
Grading papers is a difficult thing, especially if you're like me and very sensitive to (most) people's feelings. I hate the idea of upsetting them. This is compounded when we have only one paper to grade for each student. Here's what I mean: in my 425 class, and in my summer 103 class, I was able to see them learn from what I was saying, and so those first few initial failing grades weren't so hard to dole out. I learned from Stohr to always give good feedback beyond "good job". Seeing students grow from bad grades is exciting and rewarding. But with only one paper, we don't have that. Also with one paper, unless they felt that they did a good job, but you assigned them a bad grade, they won't really consider your comments, and so it feels like a loss in many ways. I can tell you this from experience: the people who fail are generally not the people who complain. It's the folks who wrote a great paper style and grammar wise, but missed the boat on the substance train that will complain. There are ways of mitigating this, too....I really like that paper thing that DM has us doing. I take a lot of time writing those, and focus on "suggestions", not just "you didn't do that". I'm hoping that this will come across more as a teaching moment, vs a punition for not doing the assignment. Re: Alison, I have not passed out any failing grades. I have one 80 (maybe a 79), and one 83. I might be being more lenient, though, because I've seen the caliber of papers that undergrads can do, and am comparing it to that...That being said, I'm not suggesting that you chance the failing grade of that student, or anyone else.
Just remember you (and I) have a pretty high standard, as much was expected of both of us at our small undergrad schools. BSU is a whole 'nother ballgame, sister...Like Sue always says, "When all else fails, lower your standards!"
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