Education Rant
Sorry in advance for those of you not interested in the current teaching of undergraduate English.
Feel free to skip this entry.
Those of you who know me IRL know that I'm a pretty laid-back teacher. I want my students to do well; I want them to feel that they 'run' the classroom (although that is, to some extent, an illusion); I want them to make the grades and progress they are happy with. In fact, I struggle every single semester between giving the students the grades that will make them happy (and either keeping them hopeful or giving them a false sense of their writing ability) and giving them the grades that I would give their essays if I had no context and didn't know them (and either making them upset/angry or giving them an understanding that there is room for improvement). By and large I have solved this dilemma by reference to two competing principles.
First: That when I assign a grade, it is the equivalent of a contract with every other professor/AI/instructor on this campus. This contract states that *if* the student puts in the same amount of work for another class that s/he did for mine, this is the level of *written* prowess the instructor can expect. When I think in terms of this contract, I realize that I'm not doing ANYONE any favours if I assign 'A's willy-nilly. Such grading will give the students a false sense of what to expect in a Uni classroom, and it breaks faith with the rest of the educational community. Normally, I'm not overly fond of rules and structure, but when I agreed to teach for this University, I became part of a larger structure that must conform to certain standards in order to function successfully. Perhaps the two largest components of that structure (at least as far as the day-to-day experience is concerned) are classroom preparation and grading. I have a duty (and I signed an agreement) to come into the classroom prepared to give my students useful information on how to write in academic genres. I also have a duty to evaluate whether they meet the standards of those genres.
The second rule/principle is where my "wiggle room" with grading comes in. It is that I embrace the Browningesque failure. Robert Browning was a proponent of the theory that there is no real achievement unless one strives for something beyond one's reach. His dramatic monologue "Andrea del Sarto" is based on this theory. It's also reflected in the modern affirmation to "reach for the moon, because even if you fail, you'll land among the stars." I tell my students--and I truly mean it--that I would rather see them stretch their thinking, wrestle with the more difficult thesis, try to explain ideas they are not quite sure of, rather than turn in a completely uninspired though formally clean essay. This is the sense in which I grade on effort. Everyone works hard to write formal essays. Academic writing is not easy (though it can provide pleasure), so I'm very wary of the "but they worked so hard" grade. On the other hand, I do want to reward stretching one's brain. I use this second principle when a student has shown extraordinary effort and a mental leap, but even so, I rarely raise the grade above 1/3 of a letter (a C+ to a B-, say).
I'm rabbiting on about this because one of the instructors from my Department sent out a highly inflammatory email this morning, condemning the Department as a whole and trying to gain support for a sort of resistance movement. The text that follows is her (expurgated) email, some quotations from her blog, and my thoughts on some of the major issues cited in both.
Hi, everyone,
Since I have been ex-communicated from the English Department by several folk, I will here at the very least voice my concerns and my complaints regarding the way this department treats its AI's. I hope that all of you -- professors and AI's and staff -- read this and concede that such treatment is absolutely unacceptable and unjust.
At the bottom is the link to my blog outlining my semester-long struggle with the department regarding how much control they should have over the grades I give my students. Please keep in mind that faculty held a department meeting and went as far as changing my students' fiction and poetry portfolio grades after I had submitted their grades at the end of the semester. This, in effect, brought their grades down and confused many of the students, who had not been warned. I was never told of this change. Unfortunately, I have learned of it through my students and through seeing email exchanges they have had with faculty. I was also told that this would NOT happen by Xxxxx Xxxxx, who was at the departmental meeting.
Please go through the archives and you will find all of the articles there. Please also get in touch with me and tell me your experiences; they will remain confidential (I have already spoken with a few of you and know you are out there)! I am attempting to get in touch with those who have had similar experiences and are frustrated; we must begin to support each other, even if I am now on the outside. We must band together and voice our frustrations, our concerns, our ideas for a better system. We have for far too long been treated like worthless and expendable servants. However, change is not possible unless we begin voicing the need for change. And, as unfortunate as this seems for some, change is not possible unless we are willing to make sacrifices.
I would also like to say that I have attempted contacting the department; they are at the point of AVOIDING my emails, and I believe this speaks to their embarrassment over this unfortunate matter.
The text is frustratingly vague, and I do realize that there is a difference between grading an academic essay and grading a piece of fiction. So I went to her blog to find out more about the matter. What I found there convinced me that this instructor was the one in the wrong. This instructor had a Creative Writing class of 17 students. She gave more than half of them 'A's, and the other part received 'B's. She writes, with regard to the changes imposed on her grades:
Keep in mind that these are not all students who would have received A's; I am ashamed now to admit that in my desperation to make things easier for my students and for myself, I did not assign them all A's but instead assigned a range of A's and B's to satisfy those in power. I wish now that I had assigned them all A's, but, alas, I was foolish and attempted to find a middle ground. It still wasn't enough.
She also crossed the line of professionalism (and that's saying something coming from me), and wrote her students a letter blaming the Department for their grade changes. The first paragraph of the letter runs as follows:
Dear Class:
I do miss you all, but I hope you are having a wonderful summer thus far. I am emailing you to let you know that Xxxx and Xxxx have taken it upon themselves to issue some of you different grades on your portfolios (it appears as though some poetry portfolio grades have been changed as well). This is not something they informed me of, but something I have become aware of through a few students. I apologize to you all and am most sincere in my dismay over this entire matter. If it had been up to me, I would have assigned all of you A's. Let this show you how unfair the system can be, and how little consideration those in power have at times for people they do not even know.
And this is the mild bit. She also incites the students to protest
"and contact the Student Advocate's Office. Pass out fliers, submit an article to [Uni newspaper], get the word out that this sort of injustice is happening on campus, that people--you--are being treated unfairly and without consideration."
Not in the letter, but as a further discussion she has: "decided that I don't want to meet with her [one of the directors of the Creative Writing Program] to discuss my 'inappropriate' grading methods because I don't find them to be, in the least, inappropriate. Does this mean that I'm being close-minded? I've thought about this, a lot. My conclusion is this. My first and foremost concern is my students. And no one, no on can tell me they're unworthy of the grades I feel they deserve. This is like telling me my daughter shouldn't get a new dress or toy because she hasn't achieved crawling as a science yet.
That's all I'm going to quote, though there are so very, very many more issues to address here.
I am a student-oriented teacher. I could give a damn about having rules for the sake of rules. In my classroom, the rules that I insist on are to protect the students and to facilitate open discussion. I manage to do that without embracing the idea that everything the students say is a special and unique pearl of wisdom. Because, let's face it, there ARE wrong answers to some questions, even if there are also a variety of right answers. The difference (and the main difficulty of the argument expressed in that last quoted paragraph) is that the instructor is eliding the students with their work. I feel many of my students are "worthy" of better grades than they receive, but in the end I have to grade the product, NOT the person. I suspect that I dislike giving low grades to my students more than most of my counterparts because I was raised to always consider other people's feelings first. Still, my class will count for absolutely nothing if there are no standards on which to evaluate.
Part of what disturbs me so much in these discussions is that this instructor comes to the conclusion that she doesn't believe in grades in general. My life would be much easier without having to assign grades. And yet, if I am *really* a student advocate, I think grades are necessary. They perform a number of functions. In addition to the 'contractual' function I mentioned above, they give students a goal for which to strive, and they function as an indicator when something in the writing does not fulfill the prompt. Especially here, grades are useful, for we often have to deal with students whose ONLY motivation for the course is the grade they will receive. Again, I am willing to admit that grading fiction writing is different from grading academic essays, but even in fiction writing, there are distinctions to be made. We say all the time that some writers are 'good' and others are 'bad'. We even make the distinction that some stories are compelling even if they are poorly written. My point is that there are standards out there and that we apply them every day.
If this instructor truly believes that grades are harmful rather than helpful, there's nothing I can say to change her mind. And that may be ok. I would then respectfully suggest that she teach at a Montessori school or an avant-garde college/uni/high school where the community is not based on upholding these sorts of standards. When I signed the contract to teach at my University, I agreed to participate in a particular type of educational community. *THIS* educational community uses grades to indicate what a student is capable of in a particular field *if* he or she applies him/herself at the same level as in the classroom. That doesn't mean that a student who receives a C- is not capable of writing an A essay; rather, it means that the student either has not yet mastered the generic skills for such an essay, or that the student simply did not expend the time/effort/thought that such an essay would take.
Because I give my students the grades that their *writing* deserves, that does not mean I am not a student advocate. It does not mean that I do not like those students to whom I assign lower grades. It does not mean that I find some of them to be more "worthy" than others. What my grading does mean is that there are certain conventions that make a strong, well-argued, clear essay in a particular genre, and I am applying those conventions to a piece of written work.
Feel free to skip this entry.
Those of you who know me IRL know that I'm a pretty laid-back teacher. I want my students to do well; I want them to feel that they 'run' the classroom (although that is, to some extent, an illusion); I want them to make the grades and progress they are happy with. In fact, I struggle every single semester between giving the students the grades that will make them happy (and either keeping them hopeful or giving them a false sense of their writing ability) and giving them the grades that I would give their essays if I had no context and didn't know them (and either making them upset/angry or giving them an understanding that there is room for improvement). By and large I have solved this dilemma by reference to two competing principles.
First: That when I assign a grade, it is the equivalent of a contract with every other professor/AI/instructor on this campus. This contract states that *if* the student puts in the same amount of work for another class that s/he did for mine, this is the level of *written* prowess the instructor can expect. When I think in terms of this contract, I realize that I'm not doing ANYONE any favours if I assign 'A's willy-nilly. Such grading will give the students a false sense of what to expect in a Uni classroom, and it breaks faith with the rest of the educational community. Normally, I'm not overly fond of rules and structure, but when I agreed to teach for this University, I became part of a larger structure that must conform to certain standards in order to function successfully. Perhaps the two largest components of that structure (at least as far as the day-to-day experience is concerned) are classroom preparation and grading. I have a duty (and I signed an agreement) to come into the classroom prepared to give my students useful information on how to write in academic genres. I also have a duty to evaluate whether they meet the standards of those genres.
The second rule/principle is where my "wiggle room" with grading comes in. It is that I embrace the Browningesque failure. Robert Browning was a proponent of the theory that there is no real achievement unless one strives for something beyond one's reach. His dramatic monologue "Andrea del Sarto" is based on this theory. It's also reflected in the modern affirmation to "reach for the moon, because even if you fail, you'll land among the stars." I tell my students--and I truly mean it--that I would rather see them stretch their thinking, wrestle with the more difficult thesis, try to explain ideas they are not quite sure of, rather than turn in a completely uninspired though formally clean essay. This is the sense in which I grade on effort. Everyone works hard to write formal essays. Academic writing is not easy (though it can provide pleasure), so I'm very wary of the "but they worked so hard" grade. On the other hand, I do want to reward stretching one's brain. I use this second principle when a student has shown extraordinary effort and a mental leap, but even so, I rarely raise the grade above 1/3 of a letter (a C+ to a B-, say).
I'm rabbiting on about this because one of the instructors from my Department sent out a highly inflammatory email this morning, condemning the Department as a whole and trying to gain support for a sort of resistance movement. The text that follows is her (expurgated) email, some quotations from her blog, and my thoughts on some of the major issues cited in both.
Hi, everyone,
Since I have been ex-communicated from the English Department by several folk, I will here at the very least voice my concerns and my complaints regarding the way this department treats its AI's. I hope that all of you -- professors and AI's and staff -- read this and concede that such treatment is absolutely unacceptable and unjust.
At the bottom is the link to my blog outlining my semester-long struggle with the department regarding how much control they should have over the grades I give my students. Please keep in mind that faculty held a department meeting and went as far as changing my students' fiction and poetry portfolio grades after I had submitted their grades at the end of the semester. This, in effect, brought their grades down and confused many of the students, who had not been warned. I was never told of this change. Unfortunately, I have learned of it through my students and through seeing email exchanges they have had with faculty. I was also told that this would NOT happen by Xxxxx Xxxxx, who was at the departmental meeting.
Please go through the archives and you will find all of the articles there. Please also get in touch with me and tell me your experiences; they will remain confidential (I have already spoken with a few of you and know you are out there)! I am attempting to get in touch with those who have had similar experiences and are frustrated; we must begin to support each other, even if I am now on the outside. We must band together and voice our frustrations, our concerns, our ideas for a better system. We have for far too long been treated like worthless and expendable servants. However, change is not possible unless we begin voicing the need for change. And, as unfortunate as this seems for some, change is not possible unless we are willing to make sacrifices.
I would also like to say that I have attempted contacting the department; they are at the point of AVOIDING my emails, and I believe this speaks to their embarrassment over this unfortunate matter.
The text is frustratingly vague, and I do realize that there is a difference between grading an academic essay and grading a piece of fiction. So I went to her blog to find out more about the matter. What I found there convinced me that this instructor was the one in the wrong. This instructor had a Creative Writing class of 17 students. She gave more than half of them 'A's, and the other part received 'B's. She writes, with regard to the changes imposed on her grades:
Keep in mind that these are not all students who would have received A's; I am ashamed now to admit that in my desperation to make things easier for my students and for myself, I did not assign them all A's but instead assigned a range of A's and B's to satisfy those in power. I wish now that I had assigned them all A's, but, alas, I was foolish and attempted to find a middle ground. It still wasn't enough.
She also crossed the line of professionalism (and that's saying something coming from me), and wrote her students a letter blaming the Department for their grade changes. The first paragraph of the letter runs as follows:
Dear Class:
I do miss you all, but I hope you are having a wonderful summer thus far. I am emailing you to let you know that Xxxx and Xxxx have taken it upon themselves to issue some of you different grades on your portfolios (it appears as though some poetry portfolio grades have been changed as well). This is not something they informed me of, but something I have become aware of through a few students. I apologize to you all and am most sincere in my dismay over this entire matter. If it had been up to me, I would have assigned all of you A's. Let this show you how unfair the system can be, and how little consideration those in power have at times for people they do not even know.
And this is the mild bit. She also incites the students to protest
"and contact the Student Advocate's Office. Pass out fliers, submit an article to [Uni newspaper], get the word out that this sort of injustice is happening on campus, that people--you--are being treated unfairly and without consideration."
Not in the letter, but as a further discussion she has: "decided that I don't want to meet with her [one of the directors of the Creative Writing Program] to discuss my 'inappropriate' grading methods because I don't find them to be, in the least, inappropriate. Does this mean that I'm being close-minded? I've thought about this, a lot. My conclusion is this. My first and foremost concern is my students. And no one, no on can tell me they're unworthy of the grades I feel they deserve. This is like telling me my daughter shouldn't get a new dress or toy because she hasn't achieved crawling as a science yet.
That's all I'm going to quote, though there are so very, very many more issues to address here.
I am a student-oriented teacher. I could give a damn about having rules for the sake of rules. In my classroom, the rules that I insist on are to protect the students and to facilitate open discussion. I manage to do that without embracing the idea that everything the students say is a special and unique pearl of wisdom. Because, let's face it, there ARE wrong answers to some questions, even if there are also a variety of right answers. The difference (and the main difficulty of the argument expressed in that last quoted paragraph) is that the instructor is eliding the students with their work. I feel many of my students are "worthy" of better grades than they receive, but in the end I have to grade the product, NOT the person. I suspect that I dislike giving low grades to my students more than most of my counterparts because I was raised to always consider other people's feelings first. Still, my class will count for absolutely nothing if there are no standards on which to evaluate.
Part of what disturbs me so much in these discussions is that this instructor comes to the conclusion that she doesn't believe in grades in general. My life would be much easier without having to assign grades. And yet, if I am *really* a student advocate, I think grades are necessary. They perform a number of functions. In addition to the 'contractual' function I mentioned above, they give students a goal for which to strive, and they function as an indicator when something in the writing does not fulfill the prompt. Especially here, grades are useful, for we often have to deal with students whose ONLY motivation for the course is the grade they will receive. Again, I am willing to admit that grading fiction writing is different from grading academic essays, but even in fiction writing, there are distinctions to be made. We say all the time that some writers are 'good' and others are 'bad'. We even make the distinction that some stories are compelling even if they are poorly written. My point is that there are standards out there and that we apply them every day.
If this instructor truly believes that grades are harmful rather than helpful, there's nothing I can say to change her mind. And that may be ok. I would then respectfully suggest that she teach at a Montessori school or an avant-garde college/uni/high school where the community is not based on upholding these sorts of standards. When I signed the contract to teach at my University, I agreed to participate in a particular type of educational community. *THIS* educational community uses grades to indicate what a student is capable of in a particular field *if* he or she applies him/herself at the same level as in the classroom. That doesn't mean that a student who receives a C- is not capable of writing an A essay; rather, it means that the student either has not yet mastered the generic skills for such an essay, or that the student simply did not expend the time/effort/thought that such an essay would take.
Because I give my students the grades that their *writing* deserves, that does not mean I am not a student advocate. It does not mean that I do not like those students to whom I assign lower grades. It does not mean that I find some of them to be more "worthy" than others. What my grading does mean is that there are certain conventions that make a strong, well-argued, clear essay in a particular genre, and I am applying those conventions to a piece of written work.