scrivel

When I first started teaching (over 10 years ago!), I was something of a tough grader. Actually, I was kind of a hard-ass. My first teaching assignment was during my second year of being a graduate student, so I was in that weird limbo between teacher and student. I think uncertainties about my own competence made me a harsher judge of my students’ abilities. As I’ve since figured out, this is an all-too-common side effect of being in grad school.

The program I was teaching for was also partly to blame for my early hard-ass-ness. As new teachers, we had impressed upon us the gravity of grading, the importance of serving as the university’s writing gatekeepers. Sometimes it felt as if our mission was to weed out the bad writers and certify the decent ones. Back then, I took this task seriously. At the end of each term, I’d ask myself questions like “Does this student really deserve to pass?” and “Could I justify passing this student to his or her future instructors?” (more…)