To grade, or not to grade?
This week's posting is a byproduct of last week's end-of-marking period grading crunch. It is my least favorite part of teaching. Not the "paper grading" itself - I learned long ago not to assign students writing tasks that I would not be interested in reading. And I take seriously my role in assessing for the purposes of giving feedback that I hope will benefit students' learning. But grading - assigning a number to what students have mastered over the course of 10 weeks - that remains a philosophical conundrum for me, and it becomes more of one as I continue to grow as a teacher. In the ideal, students would not receive grades on any assignment other than a summative assessment. For no task given along the way would students receive an actual grade - just a lot of feedback that would help learners grow toward mastery. In that case, a quarterly/final grade would be a pretty accurate reflection of student mastery. Unfortunately, that's not th...