The weight of teaching

[taylweaver]

Over the past few days, I have come to realize just how much responsibility teaching puts on my shoulders. On Monday, I had to grade papers for the first time. With math, this is not so difficult - the answer is either right or wrong, and the questions I asked did not really lend themselves to partial credit - though that will complicate things next time. But when grading essays, things get much harder. There is no objective way to say which paper is better than another. I tried to quantify it. I tried to use a rubric.

For those who don't know what a rubric is - I sometimes forget that it is not part of everyone's everyday vocabulary - just mine - it looks something like this:

Outline Organization

1 Missing Poor

2 Incomplete Getting there

3 Great Wonderful

But add a few more categories, and a better description for each number.

So I tried that system, but I realized it did not quite match with my idea of which students were writing "good" essays. And then I had to tweak the system. And I had to read each paper multiple times. And it took me hours.

After all that, I still end up feeling like some of my decisions were a bit arbitrary. And these possibly arbitrary decisions determine what grades some of my students got - the difference between an A and a B, a B and a C. This is a big responsibility.

But I have learned that teachers also bear a different kind of weight. Teachers get approached with many questions. Some of these questions reach beyond the realm of education.

Yesterday, a ten-year-old asked: "What's a suicide bomber?" She then added, "What's suicide? So-and-so told me I should know already."

Without really thinking, I answered something along the lines of: "Suicide is when a person kills themself. A suicide bomber is someone who wants to kill other people so badly that he is willing to kill himself along with them."

It was only afterward that I paused to think about whether or not I should have answered at all - though, upon reflection, I decided that if she was asking, I should answer. She knew the context - she asked me if I had heard about what happened in London - and she had read the phrase in a newspaper - I am guessing it was in a headline.

What to say after answering is an even tougher call. Do I reassure her? Do I tell her these are very bad people? I didn't say anything of substance. In retrospect, I think I should have asked how hearing the definition made her feel, what was going through her head. Maybe then I would have know what she needed to hear next.

I suppose teachers are not the only ones who face these questions and decisions. Parents do too, of course. But in some ways, it's more complicated as a teacher. For one thing, I have known my students for little more than a week. And then there are the parents themselves - if I make a bad decision, or a decision that they think is wrong, I have them to answer to.

Comments

[j00j.livejournal.com]

It seems like grading is one of those things that gets easier with practice.
And I think you gave a reasonable answer to a tough question. I still remember my third-grade teacher explaining to the class (I forget the specific context) what stereotypes were and what they could cause. Teachers have to explain difficult things, sometimes, but they can (and you will be) be a good, reliable source of information, and provide a safe space for kids to ask those questions. And if another question is something you feel would be inappropriate to answer, you could always tell them that might be a better question for their parents to answer, or some such thing. the kids I used to mentor and tutor occasionally asked some... interesting things, jaded little middle schoolers that they were. And then there was the one who didn't like us so told her parents we were telling them about sex and abortions, which in that part of Indiana would have been an extra big no-no. Fortunately no one believed her...

Anyhoo, best of luck with the teaching. I have great confidence in you.

Re: Grading

[(Anonymous)]

From: Mar Gavriel

j00j wrote:

It seems like grading is one of those things that gets easier with practice.

There's a renowned private school in Brooklyn known as St. Ann's, in which no grades are ever given. (The Catholic-sounding name of the school is misleading; the school in fact has no connections to any religious group. However, when they first started, around forty-ish years ago, they were renting space from a church known as St. Ann's, so they became known as "the St. Ann's School". The name stuck. This being New York, many of the students in the school are non-Christian, and I even know a very famous couple of frum Jewish educators who sent their eldest child there for a number of years.)The school goes from Pre-K through 12^th grade, and apparently, colleges are willing to accept the teacher-reports about 12^th-graders in lieu of GPAs.

But wait-- taylweaver has been searching for jobs in NYC schools for the last few months, so she probably knows all this already. I do not need to bore you with information you already know....

For more information, click on this link: http://www.saintanns.k12.ny.us/home.htm

Re: Grading

[(Anonymous)]

SAR in Riverdale doesn't have grades, either.