Nope, it's not grading, although in a sense it is.
It's getting negative feedback from students about the grading. Complaints about grades or about the fairness of your grading. That is the absolute worse in my opinion.
It's worse yet when you are not very sure of yourself like I am (not) right now, and when you are worried that you may have messed up, up to a certain point.
Yeah, that really truly sucks.
You know, I had a feeling that after I had gone through the grueling process on getting destructive/constructive feedback on my dissertation I would be thick skinned to withstand anything, but it seems that my stupid, annoying, pesky sensitiveness is limitless and not fixable. Getting an angry response from a student is nerve racking.
I already lack confidence in certain areas, I feel that I'm always second-guessing myself when teaching (yeah, I need therapy, I know -- would it really help, though? I am so aware of my issues... have always been). Anyway, in this case I might be partly guilty because I used a rubric for grading that I "borrowed" from a colleague who is teaching the same class. The rubric -- which the students had access to and were encouraged to examine before submitting the assignment -- was more detailed and stringent than the assignment itself.
And I didn't realize that until I was grading on Saturday night -- too late to make any changes, since my deadline for grading those particular assignments was fast approaching!
Well, anyway, I have to go back to grading and working on correcting some of my faults.
I'm not looking forward to talking to that student, but I must address her complaints :-(.
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4 comments:
You're right. This is absolutely no fun. At least at this level you shouldn't be confronted by both the student and his/her parents. Ugh.
Just put up a tough, confident front and you should be fine.
I have to agree with you that dealing with complaints about grading is one of the worst aspects of teaching. And I teach classes like Stats where there is mostly a "right" answer! Every once in a while I have made a mistake, and that's no big deal. But I hate, hate, hate dealing with grade mongering, nit picky little questions, especially ones about exactly how "wrong" a question was. (It makes me understand why some of my colleagues don't give partial credit.) I also often want to assign essays in some of my classes, but I avoid them more than I should because I hate the grading so much. I know bad writing when I see it, but have no desire to argue about how "bad" it is. Ugh.
Oh, one little thing that helps me is that any time a student has a grading question about a major assignment, I require him or her to write the question up and hand it in to me along with the assignment for consideration. That avoids the type of situation where a student just wants to go through every marked off point with me to try to see if I'll "give" any where. It also means that I can consider the issue without being under pressure.
Oh, and I don't mean to imply that all of my students do this sort of thing. It's usually a small minority that want to constantly complain about grades, and I feel particularly obligated not to just give in to avoid the hassle of debate because it's not fair to the students who are not pushing me for every single possible point.
I like pithydithy's suggestion: if the student can make the case in writing then it's a learning exercise for him/her and helps you not to have to make the decision under pressure.
I actually will change grades; sometimes I'm just wrong. And I think it's healthy for students to see that I am reasonable and can admit when I make a mistake. I don't do it often--usually I think I'm too generous with my grades, honestly--but I will do it when I think it's merited.
Ah é, eu fui TA em uma materia que chegou num ponto que a profa disse: não de menos que tanto...pq se não todo mundo reclama...eu, hein?
bjin e boa sorte!
keiko - a beira do desespero!
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