Friday, December 5, 2008

Last Day of Class: The Good and the Not so Good

(Disclaimer: There is some bragging and whining involved in this post.)

Hooray! Today was my last day of teaching race/ethnicity for the first time. It went much better than I ever expected. I have two students who specifically asked if I would be teaching something else in the spring, and one of my students shook my hand today after class and told me I was a great teacher. Hooray again!

On the downside, I have a student who is constantly plauging me about his grade on the second exam. After talking with several students who did not particularly like their grades on Exam 2 (please keep in mind that I grade blind - I not only do not look at the student's name when grading their exam, but I also grade all of one question at a time, so that I'm consistent between students), and given my grading strategy, I decided that it would be unfair to give points back to one or two students. So instead, I told them all today that I would consider applying a curve to Exam 2 after seeing the final course averages. (Please also keep in mind that they have a very cushy extra credit option for which they receive points simply for showing up.)

Two of the three original students with grievances said they completely understood. The annoying student, however, emailed me after class explaining why I should make an exception for him.

This is the part of teaching that I HATE.

Note to self: Remember the handshake, P.I., remember the handshake. And that teaching is over except for the final ; ).

Thursday, December 4, 2008