Tough Questions
by danielagins
Grades close tomorrow for the first trimester. As I hustle to get things in, and as kids start doing their best buzzard impressions, circling my laptop asking for grades and, in some cases, begging for scraps of extra points – I noticed something odd. My class averages are higher than normal. Significantly higher. In fact, upon further investigation, my class averages have been steadily increasing for the past few years – which happens to correlate with my shift in philosophy, thanks in large part to the individuals I have surrounded myself with on twitter and my graduate program at Uconn. This realization has caused significant stress. I have to wonder, are the increases in class averages due to my new way of doing things? In other words, is the fact that I have moved entirely away from traditional tests and quizzes and towards (what I hope are) more authentic assessments and activities the cause of the increase? Are the kids doing better as a whole because they are more engaged? Or is it something else? Am I getting soft in my old age? Am I subconsciously inflating grades in order to justify my actions? These are some very difficult questions to wrestle with. Help?
It’s probably a little bit of everything. (except for the getting soft part)
Thanks for the comment Eric. I suspect you are correct, and what it comes down to now is deciding what I need to do about it.
How are you grading? It seems like most grades (even in a SBG system) are pretty arbitrary anyways, or at least where the performance levels are, so why sweat it?
I think that is part of my problem. There appears to be a disconnect between my grading practices and the work I am asking kids to do. That is something I am trying to sort out right now. I guess I’m sweating it because I really want to make sure that I am asking enough of the kids and holding them accountable. While I don’t plan on kowtowing to the (our) high schools’s traditional test driven culture, I also want to be sure that my student’s are not going to get a case of the educational bends while coming up from the depths of my class. I think, in essence, what it all boils down to is that I need to consistently check myself and my practices in a more consistent and timely manner. You know, being a good reflective teacher. I seemed to have slipped away from that a bit…
My experience has been that, in the end, teachers always determine the grade, whether they know it or not.