Wk 1 Comment - From Stephanie Layne's Blog

Stephanie said:

In Chapter 3 of our textbook, Zander talks about how giving an A to a student can have a much bigger connotation than what we believe. Giving students different grades puts them in a line  and, in turn, puts those behind number one at a disadvantage. Students are much more intuitive than what we give them credit for. I know in my own teaching, I tend to be very lenient with grades. At the end of the semester, I have all of the students come up and tell me what grade they deserve, what grade do they think they earned, then I change the grade in the system if I agree.

You may think that most students would automatically give themselves an A, but you would be surprised that most students really do give themselves the grade they deserve. I am not one to rely only on test grades because I teach Foods. It’s a hands on course where we try to teach students skills to use for life. So to judge a student only on if they know how to divide and double recipes just isn’t practical. I grade on behavior and comprehension of the big ideas. Because of this philosophy I have had the honor to be “the only teacher to get through” and by that I mean what Michaelangelo said, that you much break away at a stone to see the art within. As a teacher in a urban school setting, we have many rocks and most of the teachers treat them as such and they seem shocked when they get an A in my class, but now I will just tell them that I was able to see the art inside that rock!

I responded with this:

Hi Stephanie,

Great post!  This whole idea of giving grades was what I lived by when I taught college.  My lectures were very structured and I gave a quiz everyday to start the class.  Unfortunately I realize now that all that did was give the students a panic attack to start the class off.  I don't feel bad about it anymore because I realize that was all I knew.  Thankfully we are all learning about some different teaching options in EMDT and I am looking forward to exploring them further.

Thanks for sharing your story about your Foods course!