by Matthew Fouts

Created on: October 14, 2008

Grading my students' writing is one of my favorite things to do. I love to sit at a table in Charles B. Phillips library (the closest thing I have to an office) and spend a few hours interacting with my students' thoughts and ideas, fountain pen in hand. It is a sort of meditation and, provided I don't do too many at once, it leaves me feeling refreshed and energized. However, grading also fills me with a certain amount of existential dread.

The reason for this is the fact that I have yet to solidify a theory of grading with which I am completly happy. The main problem I have in coming up with a theory is the fact that the literature on grading seems to raise more questions than answers.

One of the central issues seems to be the contradiction inherent in taking a piece of student writing and, in the words of Peter Elbow, "summing up one's judgment of a performance or person into a single, holistic number or score."

After reading Michael Bernard-Donals' essay "Peter Elbow and the Cynical Subject," it seems like the best thing would be to bite the bullet and simply rank my students' essays and be done with it. They would probably benefit from it in the sense that they would sort of "know where they stand" at all times. Bernard-Donals seems to be saying (maybe between the lines) that we're all so fu*ked up by the fact of a grade that we make things worse when we try to mitigate the grade while remaining in the university system.

So ok. I should probably just treat papers as much as a scan tron as I can, for the good of all.

But there is a little voice in my head that tells me I could do so much more. If there was a way to reach students on a level that took them beyond being a "cynical subject", well then I would be doing something really worthwhile.

It's as if there's a wall between what an English composition class could be and what it generally turns out to be. As teachers we charge in with high ideals and some really great ideas, only to hit the wall when our students respond with "what do I need to do to get..."

I don't suffer from a fantasy of having a perfect class where my students hang on my every word. However, I still remember why I wanted to teach composition in the first place. Having my students discuss civic issues or literature and seeing them put their thoughts into words is an indescribable thrill. But when I tell my students "don't worry about the grade. Just do it for yourself and your grade will take care of itself," they look at me like I have lobsters crawling out of my ears.

So I will keep on searching. There is a way to break through the wall of "what do I need to do to get.." Someday I will find out what it is.

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