For those of you who pay attention to me (and God Bless both of you), you know I gave an exam yesterday, probably because I shamelessly blogged about it during the taking of the exam itself. Gimme a break, I was waiting for Molly Molassesinthewinter to finish, even though everyone else in the room had died peacefully in their seats weeks earlier from old age.
Anyway, I'm back in my office not more than two hours later when a student from that class appears at my door and asks without preamble, "Are our tests graded yet?"
I just sat there blinking at her for a second. These tests have fill-in, they have matching, they have short-answer... and I had another class right after theirs. This is the first time I've even sat down in my office all day. She stood there staring at me expectantly, and I felt anger fill my veins like flame and death. Do I have anger issues? Would you have gotten angry, too, or am I just a child-beater waiting to happen? Well, I counted to ten - no, I really did - and then I said, "it isn't even tomorrow yet. Give me just a little bit of time with these, okay? I promise to have them for you by the next class period." I was proud of myself. You couldn't tell at all that I wanted to throw my stapler at her.
"Ok," she said, reluctantly. "I just really want to know how I did."
Oh! That's all? You just really want to know? Well, okay, then? Why didn't you just say so! I'll just grade it for you right now! By looking at it really hard! There! It's done! You got an "A!" Isn't that fantastic! Now can you please stop standing in my doorway like a lost puppy so I can get the nine thousand things I have to do before I go home tonight done? So I can grade all the rest of you unfortunate classmates' papers? If only they'd really wanted to know, too, they'd have their grade now. But they can wait. Dummies.
*Sigh*
No, I wouldn't say that you are a child-beater waiting to happen; this thing isn't a child. It is a "mature" (reproductively speaking - yuk) whatever-the-hell-it-is. Let's call it Praestolatio molestia. You should have walked up to it and placed your hand, veins coursing with flame and death, upon its shoulder. It would have melted as snowflakes tend to do.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I never bother to learn students names and faces (well, that and I don't care about them). If I knew that this was Sally Snowflake in my office, I might remember how annoying she was when I grade her exam. Instead, her grade is safe from harm. Laziness pays off for everybody.
ReplyDeleteI ought to get around to writing a book about that some day.
Some profs (math, usually) can grade tests in a whiz-bang. I was actually caught by surprise one time after I turned in a calculus final exam and the prof offered to grade the test right then and there. He, and the other students whose tests he'd just graded, seemed amazed that I declined. Hearing the grade would've been nice, but I had to catch up to the cute girl who'd just left class so I could ask her on a date.
ReplyDeleteI tell students that if they want their test graded rightthisminute instead of waiting until the next class to get it back, they can come to my office hours and sit beside me while I grade it. I'll be happy to grade any test or paper immediately, if they plant their butt in a seat and sit there while I grade. If they say, "Can't I just come back and get it?" I say, politely, "No, because you sitting here means I can share my comments with you instead of writing them down. It will be quicker that way." Smile.
ReplyDeleteThey run off and I don't see them again, save for some triple-A students who are such grade-grubbers that they can't wait two days to see their A-plus, or so narcissistic that they think I am going enter into some beatific trance in reaction to their brilliance, which they would hate to miss.
@Stella Oh God, I would have rather died than watch a paper or test of mine be graded. How embarrassing would it be to watch somebody catch my mistakes!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this post was my summer term. I had three classes, three preps, and had staggered things so I had approximately one major paper or project to grade every week along with one draft. I taught all day Tuesday and all day Wednesday. Never fear though, anywhere from 2-24 hours after a class let out, at least three students would e-mail me wondering if I had lost their papers.
Why might I have lost their papers? Well, their grade wasn't in Blackboard yet! Sometimes I hadn't even gotten home yet to kick back with a glass of bourbon and grade. Sometimes I just took a freaking day off.
I got so angry that I confronted them as classes about this: "Look, I don't lose your work. I put it in my bag, I take it out to grade, and I stick it back in my bag. Stop pretending to worry that I lost it because I didn't magically have it graded instantly. It's a 10 page paper. There are 24 of you. I write tons of comments. Please do the math and wait a week like everyone else accordingly."
This stopped all but the specialest of snowflakes. She insisted that I must have forgotten her because her grade wasn't there yet (and my friend's grade is! Well yes, she was on a school sponsored trip and had turned her paper in early).
I shit you not, I took a picture of my pile of grading, a full foot and a half tall at that time. I then put that picture into photoshop, drew an arrow into the center of the stack, and labeled it "Your Paper." I mailed that back with no explanation other than "This is where you paper is." She never did it again.
"Gimme a break, I was waiting for Molly Molassesinthewinter to finish, even though everyone else in the room had died peacefully in their seats weeks earlier from old age."
ReplyDeleteI laughed very hard. Thanks for that!
@mylittleproffie:
ReplyDeleteYou're must more patient than I am. I would have ignored those "Did you lose my paper?" emails entirely. At least for a day or so. Let them blow some sort of internal gasket, wondering if I didn't receive their email as well. My syllabus indicates it can take 24-36 hours to answer an email, so I'd be within my own guidelines.
With all the zombie comics around, I've been thinking that Sam Folkchurch might draw us a zombie snowflake in search of "grades, grades." It sometimes seems like that's all students want: not knowledge, not real feedback, just a grade (preferably a high one) as quickly as possible.
ReplyDeleteI more than occasionally receive the comment on student evaluations that I'm slow to return papers. To some extent that's true, and I'm trying to speed up (as much as is possible for a writing teacher with a 4/4 load who likes to actually think as she reads her students' papers). But I also suspect that I'm fighting a losing battle against expectations shaped by nearly instant results from various sorts of automated testing.
It's also clear that students' priorities are very different from mine. When I do get behind (sometimes due to circumstances beyond my control -- e.g. last winter's blizzards -- that upset my carefully-worked-out grading calendar, which tends to drive my class calendars, rather than the other way 'round; sometimes due to my over-ambitious estimates of how much grading I can do without a break), I tend to let finished projects sit, and focus on drafts and other preliminary stages of projects-in-progress. That makes sense to me; after all, I'm supposed to be teaching writing as a process, and part of my job is to provide guidance at various stages of the process. But from the students' perspective, the priority is getting a grade on the finished project, even if it's worth much less than the project-in-process. I understand their perspective, but I wish they'd have a bit more sympathy for the choices I make when I'm in a situation where I have to do triage (especially since I'm careful to explain those choices to them).
I'm also puzzled by students who, with final grades on assignments worth 45% of the course grade in hand, and a preliminary (basically minimum) grade on the draft of a final paper worth another 45% provided in conference (assuming they actually finished a full draft in time, a big assumption in some cases), insist on student evaluations that I've given them insufficient information about their grades in the class. They've got the grades; they've got the percentage that each assignment is worth on the syllabus; they've presumably got the rudimentary math skills necessary to put the two together and calculate the range of possible final grades. I suppose I could gin up some sort of formula that would display that range on Bb (I already give them some idea of their evolving participation grade, worth the other 10%), but that seems unnecessary (and I'm pretty sure they'd remember only the highest possible grade, not the middle of the range, and then get mad when their final grade is lower than I "promised"). Do some professors actually provide estimates or ranges of possible course grades before all of the work of the class is in and graded? Or are students who voice this complaint trying to hold us all to a standard that nobody actually meets, because it's unrealistic?
I like to enforce a civil preamble by saying, "Yes, it is a good morning, isn't it?" or similar to make the point that demands are unacceptable and manners are mandatory. They hate me.
ReplyDeleteYou mean people still write tests with fill-in and matching questions ????
ReplyDeleteProffie - I LOVED your solution. I might have to steal that one day. When I have tenure. ; )
ReplyDeleteBeaker, you're totally right. That's why I don't look at the names on the papers as I grade them. It's my way of recognizing that I might be biased, although it's pretty standardized across all students (e.g., they ALL annoy me. Except the one or two who might get a grade boost for NOT annoying me).
Stellah, you're like me - I tell them on the first day that I don't have a "smart" phone, don't want one, and don't plan on answering e-mails on evenings or weekends unless the mood strikes me. 24-48 seems soooooooooooo long to wait for these 'flakes, right? I flinch whenever I get an email "sent from my Verizon Wireless Blackberry" because I damn well know it means that they can and will write me as soon as a random question comes into their head at 9pm on a Saturday night while in the middle of a movie theater with people like me sitting behind them wanting to throw popcorn at them. Aack.
V: I totally do that with student e-mails that come without salutation or closing. I just haven't extended it to interpersonal situations. But I shall! And they can hate me, too! Yay!
Finn - yeah, with a class size of 20, I can get away with that crap. It makes it more fun for me to grade. I don't know what it does to the students, but blah blah modalities of learning and stuff.
Another easy answer:
ReplyDelete"How long did it take you to write your answers? Ok, how long do you want me to take reading them? Multiply by ."
"Class size"
ReplyDeleteI went to the hospital this morning and had to miss some snowflake emails. Seventy of them. Many of them repeats.
ReplyDeleteIt was a tiny bit of an emergency involving some hemorrhaging and an ultrasound tech saying "Okay, we're going to call the ambulance now and they're going to take you over there."
You can be damn sure that I used my phone to snap photos of the (nonplussed) ultrasound tech, my hand covered in blood, the ambulance guys (hi, cute Ambulance Guy, too bad you saw me looking like an ax murderer!) my doc at the hospital AND the nurses who looked after me, surrounding yours truly in a gown and hospital bed. Then I emailed this to my students and said "I will respond to your notes as soon as possible."
Be careful, Blackdog. They might respond with a picture of their own (probably already posted on Facebook) when you ask them, "why didn't you study?"
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ReplyDeleteUgh - typo...
ReplyDeleteI have a policy in my syllabus stating that ALL graded assignments will be returned in in a week. I stress this on the first day of class, and reinforce it by telling my students that I teach 6 classes which equals roughly 200 students. And I stick to it. Even if I have the assignment graded as soon as they leave, I don't give it back to them next class. I'm afraid this will set the precedent that they will always their work back that quickly, which just isn't possible with my teaching load. Sometimes, and this is rare, I will give it back a class early (I mostly teach MWF classes, so 2 days shy of a week) but I don't like to unless they need the feedback for their next assignment, and I always tell them that is why they are getting it early. Any emails/questions in class are answered with a quick "check your syllabus." After the first few weeks, they get it and the questions stop.
Contingent Cassandra, in my experience, most students *can't* figure out those percentages.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Scantron gets scores back in an hour!
ReplyDeleteOf course, his comments are for sh*t.
@Beaker Ben...I am so fortunate to live just down the street from Frat Row. I don't need to wait for the Facebook updates! (I do, however, take great delight in periodically patrolling my street with a baseball bad and my mean dog.)
ReplyDeleteAs more than one rock star has noted:
ReplyDeleteMake them wait, it just makes them want it more!
When I was in the U. S. Navy, they had a saying: Don't hassle your detailer, you'll get a set of orders you won't believe! (A detailer is in charge of filling billets, to send sailors to their next duty station. Most sailors would rather be sent to San Diego or Hawaii than to Greenland or Diego Garcia [look it up].)
This is precisely why I go through the trouble of learning names and faces. I can do this even for a class of 100. Early in the semester, I take a picture of the whole class. I print out the image on a double-wide, 11" x 17" page. I tape this to a piece of foam board, with the captions "Please print your names next to (not over!) your faces," and "Please print your last names too."
I then pass this around the class. Nearly everyone helpfully prints their names. At first, they think it's because I care about them. This is true, for the handful of good students who want to learn.
It also gives me power over the rest. Suddenly saying, "Knuckles McDinglepuss, STOP texting, or leave the classroom!" surprises them so much, they do stop texting, for a few minutes anyway.
Also, Online Ophelia is right: disturbingly many college students can't solve 1/2 + 1/4 = ?, let alone do anything as complicated as calculating a grade. Even with the increasingly rare cases who can, wishful thinking is rampant among the 18-to-22 set. I therefore ask them what they got on the higher of their two mid-term exams: I tell them I did a statistical analysis of this (which is true). It showed that their mid-term grade alone is a surprisingly accurate predictor of their final grade, since it predicts within one grade of their final grade 85% of the time. My analysis shows that this is even more accurate than taking into account homework, since some homework assignments score higher than average, and some score lower than average. They are disinclined to argue at this point, partly because I know mathematics and they don't, and partly also because all of this is in my syllabus (10 pages and growing).
I like to say, "I'd give the papers back earlier, but I've really been enjoying them."
ReplyDeleteChloe, I'm definitely trying that in the Spring. I got a better-than-someone-at-my-level-deserves schedule this term, so they're restoring my kharma by giving me an intro course and a "for dummies" course for the spring. I think any boundary ideas I can glean from this joint are going to be important.
ReplyDelete