Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Grading papers from kids we don't like
I was talking in our class last week about putting numbers on papers instead of names for peer grading so that the students have a chance to remain anonymous...I had a teacher in high school who was accused of giving a student a poor grade because he didn't particularly like that student (he also accused the student of plagiarizing because the student used words that the teacher thought he shouldn't know, but that's beside the point) so his solution to the problem was to have us turn in papers with numbers on them (he didn't know who was what number) so that his grading could be unbiased. By that time (spring semester our second year with him) I'm pretty sure he knew all of our writing voices pretty well, so I don't know how unbiased the grading actually was. My point with this is how do we avoid letting our opinions of a kid affect the grade we give him or her? It doesn't always have to negatively affect our grading, either - I know I got a lot of grades in high school/ jr. high that I definitely shouldn't have just because teachers liked me and I was a good student. The reason I'm asking is because I found myself already forming opinions of the kids in the papers we responded to for today that may have affected how I treated their papers. For instance, I think I really lowered my expectations for the football player because he had terrible handwriting and several spelling and grammar errors. So how do I keep myself from doing that short of trying to consciously keep myself from doing it? (which might not work out too well)
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I am really intrigued by the "numbers instead of names" idea. How exactly did it work, with assigning grades and not knowning who was who whenever he returned the essays?
I also know that I received a lot of grades that I might not have necessarily earned, merely because I was an attentive student and my teachers generally liked me.
However, I never even thought of being graded down because a teacher didn't like me. As a teacher, it's obviously pretty important to consciously realize how not liking a student could affect your opinion of their academic work. I think it would probably be a GOOD idea to make sure that you're not grading them down (or up)because of who they are, even if it makes you think about it while doing so. If all else fails, have someone else read the essay, just to see if they are having the same thoughts about the essay as you are.
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