Week 8

Vignette 9 - Ryan's Impending Doom!


I hope that Ms. Wong will be able to claw her way through the bureaucratic jungle so that he will be able to move forward into 20 level English. Until I read this vignette I had never considered that there were rigid guidelines for determining a grade by using marks from the entire term. Perhaps it would be in the best interest of the students, if this is the case, to have a year plan set up that ensures most of the weighting falls to the back end of the course. Teachers need time to build a rapport and to establish a trusting relationship with his students. After this time has been invested it would stand to reason that students' grades will more accurately reflect their ability. In the case of the vignette, Ryan was being graded before Ms. Wong had been given much opportunity to work with him; Ryan's low mark does not just misrepresent Ryan, it misrepresents Ms. Wong as well.
I leave this post wondering if a lot of teachers in the field strategically back-weight the grades in their course so that students' end grades are more representative of the improvement the students have experienced...?