When students complain about grades
Though we try to prepare ourselves for all the common scenarios we might face as teachers, I am still faced with significant anxiety when unexpected things do happen. Today I got an email from a student upset about their grade on the first Writing Project. They want to come into my office hours and talk through it. I expected that this might happen, I feared it might happen, and today it did. Even with the preparation of 601 and everything I learned from mentoring in the fall, I felt upset and unprepared for the situation. Before emailing the student back, I checked their grade on the paper - a solid B. I supposed that maybe this student isn’t accustomed to getting B’s, or felt that they needed to plead their case. I responded to the email, saying that of course they could come in to discuss the paper. Though I know my grade was fair, and I made plenty of comments on the student’s paper, I’m still nervous about meeting to discuss it. Giving number grades to students is incredibly difficult. Even though I have specific criteria for their projects and communicate those to my students frequently, I struggle to give number grades because I know that they take those values into account much more than they do my comments or anything I may say to them. How do you all grapple with this? Have students been “unsatisfied” with their grades, even though you believe the grade to be fair? How can I communicate that the number isn’t as important as the process and learning of writing itself? How would you all go about this?
This might not be directly related, but I want to ask how many times you all review your assignment sheets. I discussed mine for an entire class period and called back to it several times throughout a 3 to 4-week period, and there were still students (like the one mentioned above) who clearly didn’t read / complete the assignment. Should I be going over it every class? How much is too much? I think my students should have enough responsibility to look over the requirements for their assignments, but when I see so many students ignoring the assignment sheet, it makes me wonder. Let me know what you think. -Kristen
Hi Kristin,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry. I totally understand the anxiety you are talking about when preparing for a potentially upsetting student conference. It’s possible that the student just wants to be heard so I never underestimate the power of just listening. Even though it can be hard to be compassionate if the student wants to cast blame, it goes a long way to establish your fair, but firm grade.
I haven't had a lot of push back so far at Ball State about grades, but I have in former teaching positions and those sessions are not always fun or productive, since the student usually comes in already upset.
I was actually thinking a lot about this in 601 b/c I have experienced some really challenging student interactions, both as a teacher and an advisor, so I asked Jennifer how she handles grade disputes.
She suggested having the assessment materials prepared when the student comes in (rubric, syllabus, whatever your grading policies are for that assignment) and ask the student to evaluate him/herself based on the grading schema you provided. This takes you, somewhat, out of the potentially defensive role of justifying your grading (b/c, frankly, you already did that when you gave the student comments). It may not change the students mind, but it can at least clarify where you are coming from hopefully without escalating the situation.
Since it is still early in the semester, and the student doesn't seem to be failing, you could also focus on all the opportunities for points, revision, etc. for the rest of the semester and reinforce that a B is a good grade. It could just be the first time, like you suggested, that this student has gotten a B, which can be a shocking wake-up call for a straight A high school student.
I don't know if this info helps, but for what it's worth you are doing a great job. Thanks for sharing.
Mary
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI can totally relate to this. I felt anxious about my students potentially challenging their grades on their first assignment as well, especially because I was grading holistically. And, also as I feared, my most outspoken student addressed it in class: "How did you grade this? Was there a rubric?"
I realized in that moment that I was somewhat unprepared to understand holistic grading to my students, even though I was grading them based on requirements given to them in the assignment sheet. Luckily, I had had my mentor look at a few of my first graded assignments, including that of my outspoken student's, so I felt confident in her grade. I told her there wasn't a rubric but that I was grading based on completion of the requirements in the assignment sheet, and that we could talk about her grade individually if she wanted.
I also struggle with students not seeming to understand or read the assignment sheets. They ask me questions that are clearly answered on the assignment sheet right in front of them, and it's easy to take that as my own personal failure as a teacher. While I think it's important to be as clear as possible and maybe spend a little extra time explaining assignments if students don't seem to be getting it (which you clearly did do), ultimately, our students do have to accept some responsibility, whether that means acknowledging that they didn't put their best effort into an assignment or that they haven't fully paid attention when assignments are being explained or used the resources available to them (assignment sheets, the syllabus, and BallPoint).
It's nice to know we're all dealing with similar experiences and anxieties, which can be reassuring in a way. You're doing better than you think you are.
Shelbi
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteFirst, I would like to note that you are doing a much better job than you think you are. While it is unfortunate that students do not always read, understand, or ask clarifying questions about the assignment sheet, as the instructor you are doing all you currently can to make sure they know what is being asked of them and where to find their resources. That's all you can really do.
In terms of having students question grades, I have had a few ask why they were graded a certain way as well. Since we had conferences last week, they had the opportunity to address this in my office with me during their meetings. A few understood immediately once they were shown their assignment and I walked them through the comments. One was still uncertain of their grade, so I walked through step by step what their paper was showing me and what was missing. One perk of the way I approach grades is that students take part in making their rubric, so when there are complaints of how a grade has been given, I have the chance to say "well, this is the rubric you and your peers created," but I have thankfully not had to do that yet.
I hope the meeting goes well for you, and just know that you are doing the best you can and that is more than enough.
Abbie
I definitely am finding that I need to review my assignment sheets more frequently, it sounds like you called back to the sheet multiple times, whereas I only did it on the first day and assumed they would take the initiative to call back to it when completing the assignment, but I'm having the same issue. I think doing it 3 times in a unit is plenty enough and at some point you can't force them to be proactive in writing their project.
ReplyDeleteHi Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI can definitely understand your anxiety about your student challenging their grade. As new instructors who don't feel like "real" instructors, it's a real confidence killer to have a student come back and complain about something you put time and effort into. It's also scary just to meet with students one-on-one. I had my first meeting with a student this week in my office and I found I was just as nervous to meet with him as he was to meet with me. I think our students do understand how new we are to this and will work with us to an extent, but that newness does make any type of challenge seem a lot worse than it would to a professor who's done this before.
I agree with Abbie's post above: I'm sure you're doing much better than you think! We are our own worst critics when it comes to teaching. I think this has to do with all of the reflection we are required to do. I wish we would've been taught more strategies on how to reflect positively, but I'm glad that we are as aware as we are in the classroom because of this. I think just being honest with our students and working with what's thrown at us is the best we can do!
Something we have to consider is the previous experiences of the students. So many of my students seem to be confused by the difference between the regimented nature of most high schools and what's probably less so in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you feel like you're giving them sufficient feedback, you should feel comfortable with your grades.
You've also only brought up this one student. If that's all that's questioning your grades, then the other 24 seem to be accepting your authority as Grader. In any group, there's always one or two outliers, so don't let this one student color your experience and make you rethink everything that you're doing.
-Lucas
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI wanted to speak to your second question about reviewing assignment sheets in class. I ran into a situation this week where three of the students in one of my classes thought they were turning in their final paper instead of the actual assignment (annotated bibliography and research proposal). The confusion of these few students made me doubt if I had done a good enough job going over the assignment sheet in class.
I do something similar to what you describe in regard to assignment sheets. I usually spend the first day of the unit going through the assignment sheet, and then come back to it in the unit if I make changes or want to highlight something. And honestly, I am not sure how much we can do beyond this. We can't devote multiple class periods to reading an assignment sheet in class that students are able to access at home.
For my next unit, I have thought about specifically assigning the first assignment sheet as "Reading" and then doing an in-class pop quiz or think-pair-share about key aspects of the assignment. At the end of the day, I think that we should try to encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning.
Thanks for sharing, you are definitely not alone!
-Taylor
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteIn my first unit, I definitely made the mistake of not going over the assignment sheet enough. I only really went over it once and gave them the opportunity to ask questions (of which they were not very responsive to), and hoped they got it. I really related to what McKenzie said in class today; in my undergrad, my professors always just expected us to use the assignment sheet and take the responsibility of figuring it out or asking questions if we didn’t understand – so I came into teaching expecting that most students would do that, too (uh… wrong).
I tried to take this into account for the second unit (the rhetorical analysis). I went over the assignment sheet the first day of the unit and made a discussion board where they had to ask at least two questions they had (not all of them did, but that’s a different problem…yay). I also made an effort to connect/explain what we went over in class to how they would be applying it to their next assignment. I even took a whole day where we had a mini-competition where each group basically came up with a verbal, miniature version of the paper (working from the assignment sheet). Afterwards, each group informally presented it to the class. Everyone voted at the end which group they thought met the requirements of the assignment the best, and I awarded the winning group a few extra credit points (which seemed to motivate some of them to put forth their best effort, if not others). This provided an example for them of what the process looked like, hopefully re-familiarized them with the requirements, and brought out some questions/clarifications about the assignment that they might not have asked otherwise.
On the day before peer review, I put up a Google doc on Canvas, split them up into groups, and asked each group to come up with a list of what they saw as the five most important elements of the assignment. I then used these points to generate guiding questions for the peer reviewing process. I’ll also use these questions as a wholistic guide for grading, so that they also can’t say they didn’t know how I would be grading the assignment, as they both generated the standards and went over them in peer review. (I actually did this for the first unit too, and it seemed to work pretty well.)
I’m definitely still in the process of figuring out how many times to repeat things.
-Jessie
Hi Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI know this is really frustrating when your students don't understand anything and come up with that at the end of the unit. Because many of the students hardly pay attention to instructions. The other day when I was talking to my mentor, she told me that this is very common. That's why we need to talk about the things again and again, which is really disturbing. But we have to do so. For my first unit, I kept one day for introducing the assignment. I took a survey and created a discussion board for them on canvas. I made them ask the questions about assignment sheet. My questions were like- Did you understand what the assignment intends to know, what did you understand, What did you not, what are new words to you, what are new terms to you, what is the purpose of the assignment, how would you be benefited with this assignment, did you understand the guidelines etc. Then I made them talk to their classmates and help themselves. The next day I talked about each of their questions in class. I wouldn't say that worked 100% well . But to some extent that worked.
I also keep reminding them about at least one thing in class about their latest assignment.
I too agree that it is hard handing out (and even assigning) number grades to students’ work. The task of grading papers is a challenge for me not because I have a lot of material to read through (I actually enjoy this), it’s more about the reality that I have to assign a value to it. Even if this value is only in a letter or points grade. I know it might not be comforting to hear, but I don’t think that this disquiet over assigning grades will ever go away. I think that if it did, we should be worried.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of reviewing assignment guidelines, I do it all the time. Usually a come up with a list of the main criteria and reuse these over and over on different PowerPoints for activities or in questions they need to answer for peer review. In the end, I feel like I’m being redundant by repeating the same information over and over. Generally I try to make it come off as a bit of a joke, as if “I don’t need to be repeating this information, but I know that some of you weren’t paying attention.” Even though I feel like it’s silly to be repeating myself constantly, I have seen that it is helpful for students. However, you can’t really spend all your time recapping the information every class period. In the end, you just have to point them to the assignment sheet and hope for the best.