Student Strife

If you rode the Podcast wave last week all the way to the bitter shore, you heard Greg making trumpet sounds with his mouth.  But you also heard a short story about a student who was unhappy with her grade.  Now, this is no new thing.  If you have been teaching for more than, I don’t know, a day, then someone in your class has probably expressed a dissatisfaction with your grading.

I like to think that I am a good communicator (especially since communication is at the heart of Communicative Education).  I rarely have this issue.  A few weeks ago, though, I received an e-mail that, in short, expressed a real distaste for how I had graded an in-class writing assignment.  I admit that this course has been a struggle from day one (this is my first semester teaching it), and maybe I didn’t clearly articulate the expectations of this particular assignment.  Since we had been working on the same concepts–subject/verb agreement and complete sentences–for something like 12 weeks, I thought that the expectations were clear.

1. Make your subjects and verbs agree
2. Make complete sentences

However, I realized that maybe I hadn’t been as clear as I could have been.  I offered to meet with the student during office hours to explain the rationale behind the grade (which did come with a rubric).  She didn’t come by for a few days, so I decided I would address it with the whole class.  I began to expect that she wasn’t the only one confused.  I walked into class with the rubric and had a short town-hall meeting.  I explained my rationale and let the students ask questions.  At the end of it all, everyone seemed pleased.

The student who had initially confronted me improved significantly on the next assignment.  I believe this to be a great example of what we’re trying to do here.  Last week, I asked Greg, “What are teachers supposed to be learning from students?” Well, this is it!  They will teach us how to be better teachers, if nothing else.  We just have to be willing to reach toward mutual understanding.

-Shane