Post ArsnLqM3zKr8Tds6sq by kritischelezer@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by kritischelezer@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #ArsWEdL4Hip2rQNmCG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-03-09T12:39:41Z
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As a teacher I kind of hate grades. Grades are correlated with the things people try to use them for: do you know the topic? Can you follow directions and manage your time? Are you prepared to begin study of more advanced material? HOWEVERIt's very easy for a student to have poor grades because: they were sick, they moved, a teacher didn't like them,* a dozen different problems caused by not having enough money. *naturally I never want to be this teacher, but I've seen it happen
(DIR) Post #ArsWlm2gwiATPWacMK by dawngreeter@dice.camp
2025-03-09T12:45:37Z
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@futurebird My experience with grade school was an extremely long time ago and in Serbia so probably doesn't directly relate here. But here's my view on grades anyway.It just feels like sometimes the point of grading is to make it hard to score highly (bell curve and all that) rather than to describe knowledge gained.
(DIR) Post #ArsWmYEjlEK8smaunY by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-03-09T12:45:40Z
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Likewise it's also easy and possible for a student to get good grades, but only with the help of half a dozen tutors and coaches and because their parents are plugged in to the details of academic culture. If your grading system is competent this shouldn't mean the As are "fake" -- but, it inflates expectations for all of the students. That's just inevitable. And I think that's the foundational issue. Education is to some degree a competition because we don't choose to educate everyone.
(DIR) Post #ArsWv6CbMTX4Xdfh3I by HydrePrever@mathstodon.xyz
2025-03-09T12:47:17Z
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@futurebird yes I always consider that our mission is to transmit knowledge. Grades and evaluations can of course be leveraged to help transmit knowledge, but what is expected from us is to separate "good" and "bad" students, which I hate to do.
(DIR) Post #ArsX0UhJiQYhxcbwIa by InkySchwartz@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T12:48:18Z
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@futurebird I would love to turn my teaching into a series of conversations.
(DIR) Post #ArsXAt2s2wSAMxeFIu by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-03-09T12:50:12Z
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So, even though I think it's unhealthy that students see grades as reflections of their self-worth. I can't say that grades aren't important and to just use them as feedback to decide what to study next or to decide if they maybe need to spend more time working through a subject at a slower pace. Because grades are also a competition for limited resources. They do matter. And they often matter more for the students with the fewest outside resources to help them navigate the system.
(DIR) Post #ArsXK0PQ2PCdoVXjOK by glowl@chaos.social
2025-03-09T12:51:46Z
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@futurebird or teachers communicating they will grade on $setA of criteria but then actually gradingg by $setB.
(DIR) Post #ArsXdLGghxdy0dgBkG by ExponentialGPs@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T12:55:19Z
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@futurebird Oh God those days when offspring in school - one teacher told me offspring has ‘the look’ that means every teacher automatically singled them out as trouble. The face of an autistic kid silently and politely struggling to cope with regular classroom every day. Thank goodness it wasn’t every teacher, only(!) about half.
(DIR) Post #ArsXslIWDH9959t9KC by EricaFriedman@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T12:58:04Z
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@futurebird My grades regularly dropped every late autumn, when I developed bronchitis and was sick for weeks. Not one teacher noticed the correlation.
(DIR) Post #ArsZGLRW5n4nnauG0W by InkySchwartz@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T13:13:35Z
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@futurebird Agreed. At the same time the sheer number of students who are grade obsessed and have panic attacks over missing one assignment worth .01% of their grade isn't healthy either.
(DIR) Post #ArsZPl9drlmU9H2EE4 by timo21@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-03-09T13:14:54Z
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@futurebird Competition for resources is an important aspect of grades IMO. Competition for grades is the only reason I graduated from any level of school past elementary. I developed this fear of failure that motivated me. It was an adversarial fear against the professors who thought other students were better than me. That helped me in the corporate competition for resources also. Until my body couldn't do the 'forced march' I was putting it through and started pushing back.
(DIR) Post #ArsZsqUZ6IpR6Hgteq by planetju@mastodon.online
2025-03-09T13:20:30Z
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@futurebird I went to school in Germany and most of my classmates would only study for grades. Only a few students would engage in voluntary classes/topics. It was also generally uncool to be interested in learning new things. We do have some schools in Germany that don't give grades and while that is good for some students to develop, others struggle in their careers later on since society is unfortunately keen on evaluating all aspects of our lives.
(DIR) Post #Arsa6qmeoR3E3kpbMm by phpete@mastodon.coffee
2025-03-09T13:23:02Z
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@futurebird🙋♂️ parent of some so called "clever" kids with good grades here! We also hate grades. Setting aside that my kids have survived our district attempting 4 separate grading systems over the last ~decade, every single point you made is obvious from the inside.If we're totally honest, grades aren't even reliable performance indicators for the "good students" anymore. Perhaps my issues are system-specific, but I've yet to see a perfect one, & believe me - they've tried.
(DIR) Post #ArsaY9K9zJCtNdWFUm by belehaa@wandering.shop
2025-03-09T13:27:52Z
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@futurebird I'm a professor and also hate grades for similar reasons, which is why as much as possible I avoid grades and do "ungrading."You might like Ungrading, edited by Susan Blum (http://wvupressonline.com/ungrading), Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman (https://us.corwin.com/en-us//grading-for-equity/book281503), or Failing Our Future by Josh Eyler (https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/53857/failing-our-future)(Apologies if I'm telling you about things you're already aware of)
(DIR) Post #ArsbLI0gTz6OVaqDfU by theantlady@arthropod.social
2025-03-09T13:36:51Z
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@futurebird This is part of why I encourage students to be skeptical of applications where the only information requested about candidates is things like their grades (or standardized test scores). It's a lot of work to provide more context for that information (e.g. through recommendation letters), but so crucial. To me a lot of my work as an educator revolves around teaching students how to think differently about teaching, learning, and evaluation.
(DIR) Post #ArsdGnafq7Bkujf4tM by trainguyrom@techhub.social
2025-03-09T13:58:27Z
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@futurebird I grew up living adjacent to a poor neighborhood and got to see this firsthand. In elementary school my homeless classmates would show up by city-subsidized taxi. I had classmates who had to have their heads shaved by the school nurse because they couldn't shower enough to get rid of the head lice they'd picked up. In middle school I had a classmate fall asleep standing up because they spent the entire night moving apartments. I witnessed students getting arrested and even saw an officer use excessive force slamming a handcuffed kid into a wall for mouthing off. When these are the things going on in one's life how could a kid care about synonyms and antonyms or the historical allegories in Animal Farm or any other school subject for that matter
(DIR) Post #Arsfq2b4EorpV0mIim by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-03-09T14:27:14Z
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@eyrea That's extraordinarily inappropriate to bring up.
(DIR) Post #ArsfzcumZta8kAZQv2 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-03-09T14:29:01Z
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@ExponentialGPs The WHAT?"the look" ... that's not something I can even imagine noticing let alone commenting on. Wow.
(DIR) Post #ArsgDZmX1Vwx54MYeO by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-03-09T14:31:32Z
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@dawngreeter I'm very much against that. I would be delighted to give all of my students As if they all learned the material and I felt confident about sending them along to the next class to do well again. (that is no one would say "how the heck does this kid have and A in algebra? they can't do it at all?")
(DIR) Post #Arskd383RqWx9hpeds by lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net
2025-03-09T15:20:53Z
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@futurebird Seems to have an easy solution.
(DIR) Post #ArsnLqM3zKr8Tds6sq by kritischelezer@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T15:51:22Z
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@futurebird Grades are useless as feedback tools, I think. If there is one single grade, the only feedback it gives is 'do better' which is pointless, as the student knows that already. If that grade breaks down into grades for different aspects of a test, it makes grading the test (and creating it) a lot more work, while still not giving the level of feedback a student learns most from: words. Describe what and how improvement can be achieved. A lot more useful and empathic.
(DIR) Post #Arsv5xVsPCjhg6OlNI by sewblue@sfba.social
2025-03-09T17:18:09Z
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@futurebird My 14 year old caring about her grades was a huge relief. She is severely, profoundly dyslexic. Her self confidence in her abilities was ground to dust in traditional schooling. She refused to try because, like so many kids with learning disabilities, it is better to resist or be labeled as a "bad kid" than be the dumb kid who can't read. School was just awful and incredibly demoralizing. She has now been at a school for learning disabilities for 4 years. Now that she is being taught in a way that she can learn learn, she now super anxious about her grades and wants to do well.That said, her school don't use letter grades. They measure mastery, but also report on how much support is needed.
(DIR) Post #Art2AegGYDDUOhRcEi by SpaceLifeForm@infosec.exchange
2025-03-09T18:37:26Z
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@futurebird Also, when the student did not like the teacher.Because the teacher was not user friendly.
(DIR) Post #ArtBAz7nRJSZOIYO3M by somcak@beige.party
2025-03-09T20:18:22Z
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@futurebird this year I taught a graduate level writing class that was on a curve, and a graduate level specialized research class that was graded pass/fail. In the writing class every student has issues with their writing and received lots of feedback. Some improved some didn't. Grading writing is so subjective! Is this paper better than that one? It was my worst experience as a professor ever!!In the research class there was also a lot of writing. Every week they had a reflection paper. The writing wasn't perfect, but it was leagues better than in the writing class! I swear it was because they only had to meet an 80% standard to pass, so they didn't put about every sentence and instead focused on the why behind the research.
(DIR) Post #ArtCgIsy7RXTbq7FEu by steter@mastodon.stevesworld.co
2025-03-09T20:34:40Z
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@futurebird Speaking of grades and teacher um... dislike of students, I was living in one city, working in another, teaching in a 3rd, and taking classes in a 4th. One day, I got held up at work and missed a lecture in graduate school.Students from a different department repeatedly belittled and mocked the professor of that class in his classroom. Never belittle or mock a professor in his classroom.One day, the professor handed students a special paper, and they were ordered not to tell other students, or else.That was the day I missed the lecture.The professor decided he wasn't going to give anyone a grade higher than whatever they got on his final. It was 5 questions. One of them came from that paper.That B was my only non-A grade in graduate school. Annoying to me, but it caused one student to get a C. He wasn't one of the jerks. He was a TA, up until that test bumped him out of the program.Another prof gave me an A and a woman a B, despite us having identical grades going into the final, and each missing 1 question. She fought him for a couple of years to get her A. He even asked her, "What grade did I give you?" When she replied, "A B," he wrote "B" on her paper and handed it to her. It had no other notes. Not like him with me. He'd note the error, then see if the rest of my work was correct after that. This story has a happy ending. She wound up becoming a department chair at that same university. I'm sure he was thrilled for her.Yes. Teachers can dislike their students. And worse. The arbitrariness of my A and her B was not lost on me. My mother and father once took the same class. The prof's reasoning when he drew the line between their grades for A and B, was that a husband should get a better grade than his wife. I mean...There must be a better system. UCSC's pass-fail, perhaps. This is nuts, even with adults.