1. What was your opinion on Belanoff's "What is a Grade?"? Have you ever found yourself getting frustrated with the inconsistency of grading by English instructors? Why or why not? If yes, has Belanoff's piece offered you any new perspectives?
2. Daiker and Elbow seemed to provide opposing perspectives to the same concept: praise. Did you find yourself aligning more with one or the other? Or did you find that a synthesis of their ideas proves best in providing commentary for your student's work?
Responding to your first question: I like how Belanoff embraces subjectivity when it comes to responding to students papers. What he says makes sense to me: we would never want to grade objectively, because this style of grading would pervert the composition process so badly that students would not really be writing but instead following some set of rules. My favorite quote from the text, which I think speaks to this idea, is that "meaning can only develop as a human mind interacts and inevitably interprets those black marks-and human minds come in all varieties. Quite simply, I never react to a student text exactly like any other teacher any more than I react exactly like anyone else when I read Hamlet or The Color Purple." If we want students to try to create texts loaded with subjective human significance, instead of texts that meet certain objective criteria, I think we have to grade subjectively.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your first question, I have often felt frustrated by grades that I have received on papers I've written throughout my undergraduate career. There have been multiple papers that I received a lower grade on than I thought was appropriate. I like how Belanhoff discusses how important it is for professors to explain to their students that grading writing can be subjective at times, but they are learning how to write for a particular audience by adapting their writing for specific class requirements.
ReplyDeleteIn response to question one, Belanoff's piece really resonates with me. Like Samantha, I've always been frustrated by grades during my school and undergraduate career. Most of the frustration came from not being able to predict what would make a good grade. I remember never having a fully resolved sense of how to get that A. I faced this confusion during teaching as well. So, I like how Belanoff stresses on the subjective nature of grading and in particular, when he says: "Thus the model of an A I have in my head is a product of all the papers I have read as well as of my own individual way of reading." The words remind me that developing an idea of what makes an A is actually a process in itself that evolves through practice of teaching and also reflecting on what went well in your own papers during student life.
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