Grading Philosophy

Grading is probably one of the most difficult things for new teachers to grasp. It was for me, though I had some speech and debate judging under my belt by the time I started, so it was a little smother adjustment for me than for some. Over the years, I've whittled my philosophy down to a single phrase: students may be disappointed in their grade, but they should never be surprised by their grade. To enact this grading philosophy, we have a few tasks, which I’ve elaborated on below. I call them the “four E’s” of grading.

Below is another excerpt from my handbook for our graduate student teachers.

Expectations

We should already have assignment descriptions and rubrics for every single assignment, so this task is already accomplished to a large degree. Will students read this rubric before beginning work on their speeches? You’d think so, but surprisingly the answer is often “no.” This is where you come in; part of your job in making these expectations clear is draw their attention to, explain, and answer questions about the assignment. You will also do activities in class to help students explore and hone one or more skills required by the assignments.

Explanations

As I noted above, you should be explaining assignments to students. And part of your teaching philosophy should include clarity. But when it comes to a grading philosophy, an additional way to think about explanations is the feedback you provide students along with a letter grade. This feedback will serve several purposes.

First, this feedback will save you a lot of headaches. When students question you about their grade, complain about their grade, and attempt to persuade you to change their grade (and some will), you can rely on your detailed feedback as justification for why they received the grade they did. Obviously, this feedback should be related to the course objectives, assignment objectives, and/or the skills we want students to acquire. This feedback will also help me when these students come to see me to complain about said grade (which some do). This may seem like a cynical way to approach grading, but it’s just one of the practical uses of clear, detailed, explanatory feedback. In short, it can save us time and effort. And doing so save us from repeating ourselves.

Second, doing so contextualizes a letter grade into concrete suggestions for improvement. Although students may seem only concerned with a letter grade on an assignment, we must be sure to giving them concrete suggestions for improvements. Ideally, students will read these suggestions and use them to improvement their performance on future speeches. I’ve sat with many students in my office looking over a GTA’s completed rubric trying to explain to the students where the GTA was coming from, why the student got the grade he or she did, and what the student can do better in the future (Remember that time and effort we wanted to save?). By providing detailed feedback, we not only justify the grade given, hopefully circumventing any complaints, but we offer students something to think about for future speeches and assignments.

Encouragement

The third of our “three E’s” of grading also has to do with feedback. The feedback you provide will hopefully be encouraging. We need to tell the students what they’re doing well as well as what they can improve upon. Like suggestions for improvements, these encouraging remarks should be concrete as well. And like suggestions for improvements these encouraging remarks should be related to particular learning outcomes and skills.

Equilibrium

An often-used synonym for balance, our fourth “E” of grading refers to finding a balance between critique and encouragement, rigor and reasonableness, and fairness and compassion. As I explained above, your grading approach should include constructive criticism and encouragement. What I’m going to focus on in this section is reasonable rigor. To grade with rigor means you are demanding and fair, and reasonable in what you expect from your students.

Talking to many first-year students about grades, you might get the impression that they received all A’s in high school. This may be the case, but more often than not it usually not the case. Students may be trying to manipulate you, but what’s most likely is that they simply have to adjust to the rigorous standards we employ in our class and in university-level classes. When weighing how tough we’re being in our grading, there are a few tricks we can employ. I will detail these below.

What Should the Average GPA of My Class Be?

As long as you’re being clear, rigorous, and reflexive about your grading, you’re doing great. But as a way of entering the conversation, let’s consider what the average GPA of first-year students are. You can find the most recent information on SDSU student GPA by class level here. For years 2007-2011, the average GPA for male and female first-year students was 2.77[1]. When considering the own cumulative GPA of your own sections, whether on a particular assignment or at the end of semester, it’s sometimes useful to ask yourself, “What is the likelihood that my class will be much higher or lower than this?” The answer is, “Probably not very likely.”

For example, in a class of 24 students, if the average GPA is 3.2, you’re essentially communicating to me that I could walk into your class, pick a student at random to speak, and I’d see an above-average speaker. While that may be the case—some of us just get lucky and have a class of awesome speakers—my 20 years of teaching experience tells me that is not usually going to happen. As such, you can probably conclude that you’re not being rigorous enough in your grading.

Does this mean that you change students’ grades? Not at all. It just means that you should be reflexive about your grading process, continually asking yourself if you’re being too lenient, too hard and unreasonable, and how you might evolve in the future. But, keep in mind this rule of thumb: it’s better for classroom management, morale, and rapport with students to get easier with your grading as the semester goes on rather than harder.

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[1] http://university-stats.sdsu.edu/app/reports/GPA/all_gpa_.pdf

Teaching Philosophy: Why Do We Need One?

As another semester is over, and my thoughts turn toward the summer and beyond, the coming Fall semester. I have begun to work full force on our graduate teacher handbook. One of the sections is about teaching philosophies. This is an overlooked yet invaluable stage in the process of begun a teacher; it emphasizes rigorous self-reflection and an engagement with one's audience (in this case, the students).

Below is an excerpt from that particular section:

Teaching Philosophy: Why Do You Need One?

Every teacher should have a teaching philosophy. Think of the teaching philosophy as your mission statement. Sure, everyone wants to be a good teacher, but “good” can mean different things to different people (as can “teacher”). For example, to think that you’re going to come into one of the first classes you’ve ever taught and become a best friend, mentor, guru, and life coach to all of your students is a bit unrealistic. That’s not what you should be striving for, and I’m not sure if any teacher should be attempting to be all of those things. Student attitudes like those are likely a by-product of what the teacher actually accomplishes, like encouraging students to make connections between the material and their own lives, fostering critical thinking, and creating a welcoming classroom environment. So, put out of your mind for the time being visions of students chanting “O Captain! My Captain! (a la the film Dead Poets Society), and let’s discuss some concrete things you should be instituting in your classroom communication.

While everyone’s teaching philosophy will read differently (you can read mine[1] and get the basics of a Teaching Philosophy at http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/philosophy.html), there are some basic things you should keep in mind for your classroom communication with students. Each of these is explained below.

Frame Class Discussions and Activities

First, you can ask them to read the syllabus and assignment descriptions, but don’t assume they will. So, plan on providing summaries or overviews of the course policies and assignments. The same holds true for the textbook; we may assign them readings, but don’t assume they’ve read it. Any discussions you have on the textbook chapters should be preceded by a brief summary of the chapter. Don’t worry, you’re not doing their work for them because good discussion questions should prompt them to address things in much more detail than your summary (1-2 minutes) will provide.

Lesson Plans, Goals, and Assessments

Second, you should have a lesson plan for every class meeting. Experienced teachers may tell you they don’t need them, but they have likely internalized the important parts of the lesson plan and are incorporating them into their classroom communication. We’ll go over writing lesson plans in more detail later in the handbook. But for now, you should keep the following things in mind for each class meeting: what you want to accomplish, how you’re going to accomplish it, and—perhaps most importantly—how you will know you accomplished what you want.

This last part is one many teachers overlook. It requires some kind of assessment on your part. When most teachers hear the word “assessment,” they likely think of statistical measurements. What I mean is that you need some way to assess your students so that you know you’ve accomplished what you intended. If not, you can tweak the lesson plan for next time. This assessment could come in the form of a group discussion with carefully written questions that pertain to your objectives, a speech or some other classroom activity, or a written component (maybe some combination of these). Remember that we have assessments at the course level as well: graded speeches, exams, and quizzes in particular. But you need to approach your classes with assessment in mind, too.

Strive for Clarity and Transparency

Third, you should strive for clarity and transparency. We present the students with detailed rubrics for each speech assignment at the beginning of the semester. We also provide them with study guides for each chapter and sample exam questions. We have course policies regarding classroom conduct, treatment of classmates, absences, and so on. So, you already have a structure of clarity and transparency within which to work. The one thing we can’t provide the students with beforehand is grades, obviously. And this is where you should strive for clarity and transparency. This means provided substantial comments on grading rubrics that allow students to understand why they received the grade they did; they may not agree with you, but they should understand. It also means grading and posting grades, activity points, etc. in a timely fashion on their BlackBoard.

Create a Welcoming Environment

Finally, consider the ways in which you might create a safe and welcoming environment. Learning student names by the second week, altering seating arrangements when possible (for example, in a circle rather than rows), and being encouraging in your written and oral feedback to the students are ways you can create a welcoming environment. We’ll address more of these issues in the classroom management chapter and in our weekly orientations.

To Lead or To Manage?

In time, you’ll develop your own teaching philosophy. But here are some important questions to ask yourself: What does it mean to manage a class? What does it mean to lead a class? Are there different communication behaviors you must do for each? On what occasions might it be necessary to manage your class? When should you lead your class? These are all questions you will answer in your own way, in time.

Ultimately, two approaches have helped me in my teaching. The first is a quotation from John Cotton Dana, an influential librarian from the late 18^th and early 19^th century: “He [or she] who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” I like this, because I like to think of learning and teaching as inextricably intertwined. The second approach is taken from yoga, which I practice regularly. In short, if you think you’ve mastered yoga, you’re not really doing yoga. I think of teaching in the same way; if, at some point, you think you’ve mastered teaching, you’re not really teaching. Because teaching is about learning. We can readily accept that without teaching, there would be no learning. Of course, we need teachers to teach students. But I also believe that without learning, there would be no teaching. This not only means that we need students to teach. It also means that teachers need to continue learning.

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[1] http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~klindema/Lindemann%20Statement%20of%20Teaching%20Philosophy.pdf

Reflections on Conference Going Part Two: Embodying the Conference Experience in the Classroom

Just got back from giving a couple talks and a performance about an ongoing research and writing project, having just gotten back from another conference and getting ready to head out again, barely having taken the time to reflect on yet another one down, lessons learned, work done, connections made, etc.

I enjoy going to conferences for a number of reasons: seeing old friends, being in a new city, catching up with past students. But this most recent spate conference-going had a few sharp moments of insight that made it additionally worthwhile for me. These moments had to do with the teacher-graduate student relationship.

Too often I've tried to keep the worlds separate, as if my personal life were entwined with my work life in strands that are frayed and apart from my teaching life. Obviously, I know teaching is my work, a large part of it, but I've often thought my conference-going experiences had little to say about teaching or mentoring unless they were the subject of a paper or panel. Maybe I've kept them separate in an attempt to keep things "professional": not getting too chummy with students, graduate or undergraduate. In short, I've never really considered the way I embody conference going how I might bring that embodiment into classroom interactions.

Queering the Student-Teacher Relationship
But to talk about queering the teacher-student relationship (which is what came up in one particular panel and subsequent conversation), something I haven't as readily embraced as the process of "queering" in research, has taken on new meanings. Setting aside for a moment the political and academic use of the "queering" (I've had discussions, for example, as to whether heterosexual male scholars can do queer theory), I've realized the queering of such relationships, and the power disruptions and even inversions that go along with this approach, can be a valuable mentoring tool. I'm not just talking about, for example, using informal forms of address or even disclosing more of one's personal life to students. I'm talking about showing vulnerabilities in terms of confusion about one's research and teaching, not pretending to have all the answers and not pretending that I know I don't have all the answers (or that I avoid double negatives in a sentence).

Embodying Vulnerabilities in the Classroom

Given my desire for tight control and professionalism in my teaching, supervision, mentoring, etc. this is something I'm still thinking about in terms of how to integrate it into my everyday practice--my classroom embodiment. I tell our graduate student teacher that it's okay to admit to students you don't have all the answers. But I've always envisioned this interaction still cloaked in an air of control, a strategic vulnerability of sorts that not only makes the teacher seem human but also discursively acknowledges the teachable moments that are part and parcel of classroom interaction. There's been some great stuff written on this already, and I'm thinking in particular about Trethewey's "Sexuality, eros, and pedagogy: Desiring laughter in the classroom" in Women and Language. I've tried to do this in a recent piece of my own.

Embodying the Mentoring Relationship
But for some reason my most recent conference experience enabled me to consider this notion of embodiment in a way I hadn't before. Conferences allow for a sort of informal interaction in which one can let the facade down. It certainly can become an extension of the classroom. But in a broader way, it's also a way of embodying the mentoring relationship. And students are interested in what happens there, as the number of inquiries I got upon my return indicated: What happened? What was like? In general, what goes on at these places and what does it mean for us in the classroom? I don't know. Yet. And that's okay.

Social Media as Embodiment
I do, however, think social media--blogs, twitter, etc.--might play a role in that. At least, that's what I'm beginning to find. I have another conference coming up, so we'll see. Maybe students will read about it here. Or in a tweet.

All Work and All Play: Reflections on Conference Going Part One

Every time I bring class work to a conference I find myself working on class work and research simultaneously, which leads to a strange, almost surreal swirl of worlds. Obviously, my research and teaching are connected, but they seem more separate to me the rest of the year. I teach, I go back to my office and, if I'm lucky or disciplined enough to make to the time, I write or research or both.

Then I go to class. Then I grade, write rubrics, assignment sheets, study guides, etc. Sounds glamorous, I know. But my compartmentalizing fails me when sitting in a hotel room, lounge, or bar, trying to do both. I've divided my scholarly world here and my classroom world so distinctly and, I think, erroneously and unnecessarily that the mix of the two never fails to jar me a little.

So, I'm sitting here prepping for a presentation, breaking some of the rules I teach in my undergrad communication classes, reading what I've written about grieving my brother's death 10 or so years ago (see my blog Long Canyon Lost for more on this), and I come across a passage in which I describe going to an academic conference right after he died. It's like standing in front of a mirror with a mirror behind me, watching my copied image get smaller and smaller until I can't make it out. I wonder: am I teaching what I write and research, truly? If so, how? Because I can't quite make it out from here.

I guess I'll pack up and go to the presentation, deciding to keep things separate a little while longer until I can make more sense of the relationship. It's an ongoing and invigorating journey, though, so I don't expect it to conclude just yet. Maybe I should write about it, or write about writing about it. That makes sense, right?

Epilogue
Presentation went well, inspiring and educational. Back in the room, grading papers. Transition wasn't as abrupt, probably because of invigorating communication with colleagues at lunch. Amazing how the social support networks can ease the transition from one sphere to the next.