RE: Re: grades/authority/community, etc.

["Dr. Deborah Martinson" <dmartin@oxy.edu>]

Lynne,
	I do think that our evaluation of a paper has an impact on the 
person far in excess of what we intend it to have.  I think the comments 
I make do help. I try to see each paper as an on-going negotiation of our 
progress (the students and mine) and address their successes as well as 
what I see as their missteps.  I am personal and professional, funny and 
dead serious.  This approach of us (prof and student) working together takes 
time--to get to 
know what the issues are, who he/she is, who I am, but if we think 
writing is real communication, this has to be.  They know that I am 
working as hard as they are on  their writing well, not just to me, but to 
the 
community they are a part of (I often refer to their potential writing in 
graduate school to show them what our goal is).  
	I have taught for so  many years that my grading doesn't seem 
idiosyncratic, but a learned response to certain discursive moves they 
make. When they get a lower grade then they want, I tell them truthfully, 
that I too was disappointed or frustrated.  But we'll work on it. And 
then I work to show them, not tell them, how to do better.
	I am not 
suggesting we all have these similar methods or definitions or pedagogy.  We 
have 
vastly different students, methods, professional goals, personality traits.
But I am suggesting that we treat education as shared effort. I have 
little to say to those who won't put real effort into this work, and they 
know they must, if their grade and their ability and writing authority is 
to increase.
  I may sound more democratic, more nurturing than I am .  I am pretty 
autocratic in 
the classroom.  I am flat out pushy. I assume my authority of "knowing," 
but also assume 
that my profession means more than knowing,--it means actually working 
together with others so they can know.  Hard.  I'm tired just writing it!
We are teachers as well as evaluators as well as graders.  If I failed 
too many students I would count their failure my own. I missed something 
in the teaching.  
Something would be as amiss if everyone got A's right from the start.  
I would have lost my goal of pushing beyond the now.
	Sorry for length.  I do get going.
Debby