Grading As an Opportunity to Encourage Students
Early in my teaching career, I had a conversation with a veteran math teacher, about grading. I greatly admired this teacher, a "mom"-type educator who spent hours and hours in voluntary after-school assistance for her ninth graders, patiently trying to find just the right way to get each of them to understand the abstraction of algebra.
"I always see the first grade that I give to a student as a kind of investment," she said. "I want them to know that I believe they can be successful, if they just persist."
Although I hadn't given many grades at that point, I knew what she meant: How a very low grade feels to a student who's put good intellectual effort and time into a difficult subject. How it's better in the long run to nurture children's optimism around their own learning. How using a grading as a weapon can backfire on teachers. How immature students--and in ninth grade, immaturity is the default modus operandi--might respond to their first failing grade.
You'd like to think that a low grade would be construed as a warning, a spur toward greater effort and focus. You'd like to think that--but not so much, at least for some kids. For them, a low grade feels like proof there's no reason to even try.
How do you reconcile that with points gained, percentages achieved, assignments completed and comparatively evaluated--the traditional tools of grading? There's no such thing as a completely objective grade. Compiling, weighting and averaging numbers often leaves a good teacher