Re: Eric and Fred's ideas on grading

[Latisha LaRue <kfischer@keller.clarke.edu>]

My situation with the fyc class and the lit. class was much like this.  I 
took "negotiating the grades" to the nth degree.  Over the term, students 
and I established goals and criteria for individual assingments and work, 
for portfolios, and for the final report.  We met one to one before they 
left campus for break.  Generally, the grades they determined for 
themselves were very close to what I had thought.  But there were some 
where we had vastly different opinions.  Halfway through one of those 
conferences, I suggested to the student that we might each break in our 
conversation for a bit and write about why we thought what we did about 
the grade or write why we may have agreed/disagreed with one another.  
When it came down to it, when there was a difference, I went with the 
students' evaluation.  I spose after 22 years in teaching I could be 
accused of going "soft," but I don't see it this way.  In relinquishing 
the final sayso on grades, I realized more fully liberatory practices in
teaching I've been working to achieve.  It is the last vestige of power, of 
the kind of authority I don't find very conducive to learning, that I was 
clinging to.  I am not sure yet exactly what I have learned yet as a result 
of that experience but I know it is already profoundly effecting my 
preparation for my classes for next term.
			Katie 
*************************##################################*******************
Katherine M. Fischer                    
English Department        Clarke College         
Writing Center            Dubuque IA 52001       
##############################################################################
> I did something similar, Paula. 
> 
> Basically, I attempted to distribute authority, something that gets 
> talked about a lot but is very difficult to accomplish. Can't claim my 
> class was completely successful. When I asserted that I would not *give* 
> grades to anyone, that everyone would determine their own grade based on 
> their own criteria, some flat out didn't believe it. Some tried to 
> believe. A few got it. 
> 
> And those who couldn't manage to really grasp the authority laid at their 
> feet are blameless. The situation was utterly anomalous in their 
> educational experience. Sort of like someone walking up to you on the 
> street, someone you've never met, and saying you can have three wishes. 
> Any sane person will be very skeptical.
> 
> by the way, I also had a number of students ask that their list and 
> moospace be kept available so they could keep in touch. Whatever else 
> went right or wrong in that class, this evidence of a sense of community 
> made the whole thing worthwhile for me.
> 
> --Eric
> 
> // Eric Crump
> \\ wleric@cclabs.missouri.edu
>    --------------------------
> // "Quality is not a *thing.* It is an *event.*
> \\                            --Robert Pirsig
> 
> 
>