Grades

Note: This was written on March 24, 2014, but stayed as a "draft" in my blog because I was not sure it was relevant to what I wanted this blog to be. I decided that if I wrote it, and its about education- it's relevant.

Today, I graded a paper for the first time. My mentor teacher handed me a student's short story and a rubric and said "You can try to grade this...if you want." Clearly, my mentor teacher had very little faith in my ability to grade a paper, and it turns out- she was absolutely right to doubt me. I didn't even make it to the first page of the story before I found myself absolutely torn between the student's work and my mentor teacher's rubric.  I struggled on, grading the student on grammar, creativity, use of detail, and the use of dialogue and dialect in the story using the carefully outlined rubric (no name on title page? -10.)The student wrote a wonderfully creative story about a character's search for her long lost twin sister, but the essay had quite a few grammatical errors and the student definitely needed to add more description to her characters and setting. I wrote some constructive criticism regarding the story, and then added up the "points" the student received based on the rubric my mentor teacher had given me. Based on the rubric, the student had received a 65% D. I was shocked. There was simply no way I was about to give this student's creative writing a "D". I mean, is there a better way to absolutely crush a student? Fortunately, the bell rang, ended my observation time, and I simply handed the essay and rubric back to my mentor teacher.

Driving away from the school, all I could think was "I am so, so , so not cut out for this."