I have been so lucky this semester...I get to read and comment on 40 student reading journals that are shared with me via Google Drive. My old self would find this daunting; frustrating, even. You mean...I have to log on throughout the week and comment on every single one...and then GRADE them? Put the grade into a grade sheet?! Ok and let me admit to something. That "old self" was about three weeks ago and one day after I assigned this project. I suddenly wondered what I got myself into. I thought that this would put more onus on the kids--they could read and do some analysis and we could do a cool debate about the stuff they read. I loved the choices they made; all the books were controversial, hot in topic, and culturally popular. So when I sat down to start reading those 40 shared documents, I felt defeated: where did my enthusiasm go? I probably heaved a sigh at that point...and started in. But something happened shortly thereafter. I really, really, really started to enjoy them. (Not all of them......such is life!) But take a look at the response below; the student's novel is Of Mice and Men. (My question is right after the number "2" then his response is after)
I loved reading the complexity here. It's simple yet gives me so much insight as to how the student feels about the book. At the same time, I feel so connected because I loved reading this book. I like being able to get into the minds of readers; I think back to the W-RN that we analyzed a few weeks ago. It's such a great way to get personal insight.
And this week, I really started to take that to the level of my own thoughts and how I will give constructive, thoughtful, caring feedback. And then from that, I started asking myself how I was grading these pieces of writing? As you can see from my comment, I gave this student 20 out of 20. Using theories from this week's readings, I have started now to think more about how I incorporated behavior AND content knowledge into the grading. I have students who turn these journals in late and I immediately take off two points per day. Moving on from just these journals, the readings also made me think about other bigger assignments in different classes...I have students who didn't turn in a huge college research presentation yet. It was due in late January!!!!!!!! (argh.) But one tried to turn it in to me Monday. Um. How do I keep my frustration out of that grading? I feel like that's a combination of the Ferriter piece AND the Namaste piece. I have to try to remain peaceful and thankful but at the same time having some sort of balance showing that the behavior displayed here is NOT acceptable, but at the same time, he did the work! Ack. ..............Upon further reflection, I am just so very thankful to have the Namaste piece this week. I feel like it was a nice, relaxing way to try to find peace and balance while reading other pieces about creating grading balance. (How many times can I say "thankful," "peace," and "balance" in one blog posting? Going for the record here! Although, if you give that some deeper analysis, I kind of like that those three key words were floating around in my brain this week. Again: a nice mid-semester mentality to be faced with.)
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