Power Assessorizing

O.k.

So, I'm doing what I do: Teaching future teachers.  

They are lovely.  Fresh-faced.  Eager to please.  Full of good ideas and hopes and really really substantial criticisms of the education system.   I love them!

However, I am struggling.

See, I teach something called Assessment of Learning.  Well, MSU calls it this.  I call it Assessment FOR Learning.  Which is what assessment is ultimately meant to be: FOR learning.  Not for funds. Not for awards. Not for merit pay.  FOR LEARNING.

Like, if a student can't tell you that four + four is eight, then you say to yourself, "Well, I must go back and reteach it."  Or, at another point, you say, "Well, I've been over that a hundred times!  What's going on here?"  And there are all kinds of cool, easy ways to figure out who's learning what and how that can inform what you do in the classroom.

But now the professor becomes the assessor.  I've graded the first rounds of essays, responses students write to the articles we read in class.  We have a rubric, which is can be a great self- assessment tool, pulling apart all the aspects of completing a task and describing how students can attain a certain grade. For instance, what is a good reflective essay?  Well, for one thing,  it "...is logically organized" and vocabulary used to write it is "...subject-relevant."  It also delineates between a "content" grade and one for "conventions of writing" (punctuation, mechanics, etc.)

In my class, I have a generous revision policy.  After all, I am a writer, and I never get anything down the first time.  Never.  (See that little typo, above, which I intentionally kept so I could make this point.)

I also weight this requirement of the class;  essay grades account for 40% of the total grade for the course.  The rest?  Participation and in-class activities, as well as the final project.  

But the writing part is important.  Writing is thinking.  Thinking is writing.  And I hate this aspect of my class--the grading of this thinking.   Even with our nice little rubric, with our revision policy, with all the feedback and help I give on these things, I recognize that assigning a grade means making a judgment.  I'm not saying that's wrong, but it's hard.  

I have lovely, smart students who struggle to get a sentence on paper.  Sometimes, I can't even be sure they read the article or watched the video on Edutopia or listened to the podcast.  And I find myself getting annoyed. Indignant.  Frustrated.

Other times, when a student is really saying something important through their writing, when they've really GOTTEN it down, I want to make smiley faces and exclamation marks all over the paper, then I want to write them an email saying, "Thank you, student!  You are the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to  me!  I love you!"

And that is equally disturbing.  

Because in both instances, there is the slightest notion of subjectivity here.  Especially with something like writing.  

For instance, I'm a "professional" writer.  And I'm old.  How good ARE my students meant to be at this point in their lives at what is an evolving skill?  I want to be part of that evolution, but to do so, I have to start at some baseline.  To do so, I have to acknowledge that work needs to be done.  And that critical aspect of evaluating someone can be hurtful, no matter how carefully it's broached.  

That hurt, I think, can also build walls that influence the way students think about us, our values, and our intentions.  Every day, I ask myself, "Is this about power?  What do you want here?  What do they need? Is this fair?"  And it can be harrowing, finding these answers.  

I hope by asking them of myself, I am a better teacher.   But who knows.