The Dawn Treader

I think grades are highly overrated.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that I believe that grades hinder learning.

By and large, most kids learn how to work the system.  The goal is to get the highest grade for the least amount of effort.  The focus becomes on how to work the teacher to get the good grade.  Furthermore, grades become a source of pride rather than a reflection on learning.  Grades are unnecessary.  After all, do you seriously think that Socrates graded Plato?

That said, to be a part of the machinery known as school in America, you have grade your students.  So I did.  And hated every minute of it.

It is incredibly subjective, no matter what anyone says.  I tried using rubrics that established how the grading component would work.  While helpful, it was not workable.  If your rubric is too complicated, it becomes unwieldy.  If it is too simple, then you are basically back to totally subjective grading.  Trying to follow the rubric using cold calculus loses something too.  It is a reductionist way of looking at the product.  A paper is more than just the sum of the parts.  While helpful in guiding students toward what you are looking for, rubrics are not so helpful in actually grading the final product.

The system that most veteran teachers use is to read through papers and decide which are the A papers, which are the B papers, which are the C papers and so forth.  Once the papers are separated, then the red pen comes out and you begin marking up the paper justifying your decision.  Yes, it is sort of backwards and highly subjective, but measuring the quality of a paper (or essay or test answer) is a subjective messy business.

I worked with the best students in the world, and rarely if ever got a complaint about my grading.  Nonetheless, it takes a lot of time and in the end, I don't think the grades assisted learning in any way, shape or form.

The second thing I disliked was hearing excuses for why something was not done.  Though I did not have to deal with this much, it did come up.  I really wanted a kid to just say, "I felt like watching the NBA playoffs instead of writing your paper."  I rarely received a straight forward answer like that.  Like it or not, teaching involves confrontation a lot of the time.  If you cannot handle that, it is not a good profession for you.

The final thing I disliked about teaching was the constant pressure to prep for class.  My weekends were spent getting ready for the next week.  Since my teaching job was a second job, I could not use normal hours to prep for class.  I was a tired puppy by the end of the semester.

I have a tremendous new respect for high school teachers who do this full time for a living.  Some of the teachers in this school had 4 or 5 preps per semester.  Amazing.

Despite the downsides, I hope to transition into teaching full time at some point in my future.  The benefits of impacting lives, conveying truth and shaping souls far outweighs the negatives.