Grading papers at Grinnell

Grades cause fear and loathing, and that's only among the faculty who have to give them. "I hate grading!" was the initial reaction I got from one tenured professor when I asked him to write something about grading. I agree--one reason why I so value my job in the Writing Lab is that in it I have the opportunity to teach without the necessity to grade. Or as one English professor says, "I see that they've read the stories, understood the concepts, been engaged with the content matter of the course. Why, now, do I have to sit down and say, 'Well, this one said it better than that one'?"

Why is grading such a trauma? How do faculty at Grinnell go about grading and talking to students about grading? This and the next issue of the Writing Forum will attempt to answer that question. None of what is said in this issue should be construed as describing a "correct" way to grade; instead, these remarks are intended only to begin a conversation about grading, to explore how Grinnell professors think about grading. A diversity of grading practices is inevitable at an institution like Grinnell, and, I would maintain, desirable. As I tell my Writing Lab students, who occasionally complain about receiving a lower grade from one professor than they are used to receiving from others, "You're learning the valuable skill of how to write for different audiences."

To begin our discussion of grading at Grinnell, I have asked an non- representative sample of Grinnell faculty to describe how they grade and what they tell their students about grading (I selected my sample solely on the basis of whom I had not asked for contributions before, who I thought would agree to write something and, among that group, who answered me first.) What follows, then, is what some professors say about grading, how they think about grading, or what they tell their students about grading.

Continued on next page