Feeling a wee bit better

Well, I was deathly ill yesterday and today I am honestly feeling a bit better. I asked my husband whether or not I should go to school and he said "no" because I told him I wasn't exactly feeling 100%. I do have late classes tonight and then early classes tomorrow morning, so maybe it is not so horrible that I am staying in today.

I did already get someone to cover my class, so that is good. I am a little weary about having this particular person cover my class, but I talked to them about the material last night and I think they are much more prepared than I would have been with the material so that makes me feel good about it.

Today it is pouring down cats and dogs. Which echoes how I am feeling about the day. Today is a depressive day because I have a ton of grading to do and no system in place to help me with it thus far. I am thinking about changing my grading system, hopefully to benefit my students, but it may (in effect) hurt some of them if they did not finish their homework.

In the department, a lot of people like to grade using "completion" as their measure for grade. What do I mean? If you did the homework you get 10 pts, if you did not do it you get 0 pts. So if you worked on a few problems, did everything completely wrong and turned it in you got 10 pts and if you really struggled on the homework, went to tutoring and did a good job of cleaning up your work then you got 10 pts.

I ask you, how is this fair?

One could argue, life is not fair. There are plenty people who get by in school, and in life, without doing a lick of work. But is this a good lesson to those who make the effort to do well despite the odds?

I have some students who are not going to pass. The have two exam grades that have placed them in the "no pass" zone. They will be *very* mad at me that they are not passing and I know I will get tons of complaints after they receive their grades back.

Although, I think they know. I think they know that they are not doing well and will continue to not do well. They may "understand" the material in class, but when they sit at home in front of their homework it does not come so easy to them. I worry about these students, do they realize that I worry about them?

I think the bigger question for me is: is it better to get them their papers back without comments and for them to feel validated about getting a grade on it? Or is it better to get them their papers back with comments and to correct their errors so they can do better on the exams?

One of the other TAs tells me that the students do not even look back at the comments on their papers, they may look back at the first few comments, but after a while the comments are lost to them - they will never read them, why write comments if the students are not going to read them? How do I know which students will read the comments and which ones won't? This seems to be an ever-growing battle against my students, or really students in general. How can I know the best way to assist you if you do not work with me (your instructor)?

I do have opinionated students, students who think they know best and who think that what they need is to see examples on the board worked out in complete detail and then to be able to replicate results. What they really need is to be able to learn how to think. I gave them an article about the college process, about learning how to think, about the type of thinking that is required of them throughout the college process. I graded the quiz I gave to them that had a question from this particular article, did it give me insight into how they think? It gave me insight into how prepared they were for class.

More than half the class did not bring the article with them. I got more blanks on that particular question than I was expecting. I thought it was an easy question to ask of them, had they put *anything* down, I would have given them credit, anything from the article that is. But did they bring the article that I told them to bring? No. When I ask them to keep a worksheet to bring to class next time, do they remember? No.

I could go on and rant and rave about my students, but I think I am going to stop here before I give myself a bigger headache than I already have because of this cold/flu/illness/something. I am honestly not at all sure of what I have anymore - but I do know that I am probably still contagious and therefore should not go to class for at least one more day. Tomorrow I will go to class, tomorrow is another day. Maybe tomorrow I will feel better about my students perfomance. Maybe tomorrow my students will do well on the quiz that I would have given them on Monday if it had not been for the fact that I was sick.

Maybe tomorrow things will be better. Maybe I will be feeling more than just a wee bit better.