The first time I had to "correct" a paper as a teacher, I re-read, re-graded, and re-commented on each paper about three times. After grading and commenting on all the papers, I went back and did the work all over again, just to be sure. After reading all the papers, I realized I now had a very clear idea of what I wanted from my students because I now had a good idea of what they could produce.
I don't think this is an unfamiliar situation for many teachers. I still go through a semblance of this exercise when I get the first batch of writing from my students -- naturally, I'm more aware of what to ask and what to expect then now than I was then, but the first paper is always the most ragged with overuse. However, I remember that the issue that most caused this revision, hesitation, and lack of confidence in my ability to mark these papers was my obsession with the grade itself: in the institution in which I had been working, I had been told that there was a maximum average I could not exceed and a minimum I could not go below.
My first qualm with this, other than the obvious, is that this was somehow about "me," a teacher, rather than the students whose work should produce the grade, which itself is only a measurement of how well they have understood the material and accomplished the assignment. If the class I'm teaching is one in which the students have an excellent grasp of the material which they then reflect in their writing, who am I to limit the grade thereby ultimately lying about the level of their work?
As a student, especially in school, I had thought there was among some teachers an attitude of competition, of almost enmity, with the students, as though their primary goal was to fail their students or prove them unworthy of the level they had reached. I hadn't understood it till that moment when I had to go over the meticulous and detailed grades I had given to make sure that no one had received even a quarter of a mark more than they "deserved". The problem being that what they deserved was delimited and controlled by an objective and detached understanding of the students that I knew better than the grade limit did.
I'm not trying to say that there's no point in having these limitations. There does need to be some standard, something to fall back on. However, the average that I was supposed to remain under at the time was very low, and this framework for my grading, marking, and commenting even affected how I graded student papers in other places I taught at the time which were by this standard more "lenient." This issue made me what students have termed a stingy grader or a strict grader. I don't mind the term much, especially now that I understand my goals more and have come to develop my own framework, but at the beginning it was a fact: I was stingy because I was afraid.
Also, having to begin by thinking of a grade, and that becoming the sole purpose of commenting on a paper, takes away the point of the whole exercise. A test shows whether a student has understood the material or not, but a paper is a process, not an end point. Focusing on the grade has forced me to feel like I need to judge the student, rather than help them learn and achieve their ultimate goal. Because I felt I would be personally persecuted if a student received a high grade, I began to focus on the problems in their papers, not rejoicing when I found them, but feeling relieved that they were present, meaning the grades would not rise too high. What I should have been focusing on was how to help the students overcome these problems. However, this is where rereading the papers always helped: I would focus on the grade after working on guiding the student in developing the work.
Nowadays, commenting on papers isn't about me, and the grade isn't mine. Guiding the student comes first, and the grade is a reflection of their progress at the time. I try not to think too much about the average while I grade, and now that I'm a lot more familiar with the overall goals and path of the courses I teach, I know what "standard" I am looking for from the beginning. When I read their paper, I'm foremost most interested in guiding my students, since this is about them.
I don't think this is an unfamiliar situation for many teachers. I still go through a semblance of this exercise when I get the first batch of writing from my students -- naturally, I'm more aware of what to ask and what to expect then now than I was then, but the first paper is always the most ragged with overuse. However, I remember that the issue that most caused this revision, hesitation, and lack of confidence in my ability to mark these papers was my obsession with the grade itself: in the institution in which I had been working, I had been told that there was a maximum average I could not exceed and a minimum I could not go below.
My first qualm with this, other than the obvious, is that this was somehow about "me," a teacher, rather than the students whose work should produce the grade, which itself is only a measurement of how well they have understood the material and accomplished the assignment. If the class I'm teaching is one in which the students have an excellent grasp of the material which they then reflect in their writing, who am I to limit the grade thereby ultimately lying about the level of their work?
As a student, especially in school, I had thought there was among some teachers an attitude of competition, of almost enmity, with the students, as though their primary goal was to fail their students or prove them unworthy of the level they had reached. I hadn't understood it till that moment when I had to go over the meticulous and detailed grades I had given to make sure that no one had received even a quarter of a mark more than they "deserved". The problem being that what they deserved was delimited and controlled by an objective and detached understanding of the students that I knew better than the grade limit did.
I'm not trying to say that there's no point in having these limitations. There does need to be some standard, something to fall back on. However, the average that I was supposed to remain under at the time was very low, and this framework for my grading, marking, and commenting even affected how I graded student papers in other places I taught at the time which were by this standard more "lenient." This issue made me what students have termed a stingy grader or a strict grader. I don't mind the term much, especially now that I understand my goals more and have come to develop my own framework, but at the beginning it was a fact: I was stingy because I was afraid.
Also, having to begin by thinking of a grade, and that becoming the sole purpose of commenting on a paper, takes away the point of the whole exercise. A test shows whether a student has understood the material or not, but a paper is a process, not an end point. Focusing on the grade has forced me to feel like I need to judge the student, rather than help them learn and achieve their ultimate goal. Because I felt I would be personally persecuted if a student received a high grade, I began to focus on the problems in their papers, not rejoicing when I found them, but feeling relieved that they were present, meaning the grades would not rise too high. What I should have been focusing on was how to help the students overcome these problems. However, this is where rereading the papers always helped: I would focus on the grade after working on guiding the student in developing the work.
Nowadays, commenting on papers isn't about me, and the grade isn't mine. Guiding the student comes first, and the grade is a reflection of their progress at the time. I try not to think too much about the average while I grade, and now that I'm a lot more familiar with the overall goals and path of the courses I teach, I know what "standard" I am looking for from the beginning. When I read their paper, I'm foremost most interested in guiding my students, since this is about them.
