I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I really dislike grading. While I understand the point of grading (because they pay us to do it, right?), I have this awful feeling that a “C-” will cause a student to shut down, as opposed to desiring to improve. While there were vast improvements between the two essays, most of those improvements happened to students who had a grade that was originally within the high-C to mid-B range. I had one student who went from a “C-” to a “B+” (out of the more than 15 “C-” grades given), because she actually brought her second essay to me during office hours and worked on it with me. However, 1 out of 15 doesn’t seem all that promising.
To combat this fear, I’ve decided to allow students the ability to “revise” their essays during the conference. While the prompt allows for a student to argue that they deserve a better grade, to be their own “defense lawyer” against my status of “judge”(Elbow 332), I felt that they would be better served by being allowed to use my comments as a means of training. While the possibility of arguing for a higher grade is still available to all of my students, I’ve offered them the ability to move up 1/3rd of a letter grade (say, from a “C-” to a “C”) by briefly explaining how they would change one problem area in their essay.
My hope is that by allowing them to raise their grades slightly, the students will come to see me as less of an enemy. Additionally, I hope that this will get my students into the habit of revising their writing (which they swear they do, but… yeah, right). Depending on how well this works out, I may get in the habit of allowing minimal revisions after a grade is posted.