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I teach English but I rarely call myself The Teacher. I'm there to help them on their journey. I explain at the start of every class that their final grade (the

I teach English but I rarely call myself The Teacher. I'm there to help them on their journey. I explain at the start of every class that their final grade (the uni currency) will rely more on the effort they put in than an actual note. The motivated ones love it, and I have seen this approach help the uncertain feel more confident when their effort is what is noticed, not a grade not lower language ability. Those students then start putting in more effort, and excel. There are still a number who just come, just sit, low effort, and this group is often equally divided into high level and low level language levels. It's not just the "bad" or "poor" students. By the start of the second semester the class is functioning really well, with students really trying, confident regardless of actual level, participating. It's always so heartening to see former back row students moving up to the front, and the front row making room for them.

dbsmith83 5y ago
I kind of don't like this approach. I grant there is a huge discrepancy between students in reading/writing ability coming into a class, but forcing everyone to put in the same effort didn't fly in my math and science classes, so why should it be different here? Instead of being able to use my extra time that I didn't need to use in my literature classes by studying other things, I had to put in more effort to make my writing "extra extra" good. Conversely, if someone was a math wiz, they could use the extra time not spent studying math to study literature, or whatever else.
- asoneth 5y ago
  > Conversely, if someone was a math wiz, they could use the extra time not spent studying math to study literature, or whatever else. If a math wiz can ace their math class without studying I'd question why they're not taking a harder math class. Alternately if the math wiz want to focus more on literature (or whatever else) this semester wouldn't it more efficient to skip the math class entirely? Maybe in high school or mandatory undergraduate courses I could imagine a rationale for deliberately taking easy courses, but I've encountered students in graduate-level courses at an expensive private university that could have passed the final exam on the first day. I can't fathom why anyone would waste so much of their own time and money on a class that isn't going to teach them anything.
  - matart 5y ago
    When I was in university for engineering I didn't get a choice which classes I took. You took the classes that were part of your degree. You also didn't get a ton of flexibility in when you take a course. Courses were generally offered once per year as all students would progress at the same rate.
  - dbsmith83 5y ago
    > If a math wiz can ace their math class without studying I'd question why they're not taking a harder math class. Alternately if the math wiz want to focus more on literature (or whatever else) this semester wouldn't it more efficient to skip the math class entirely? ... I can't fathom why anyone would waste so much of their own time and money on a class that isn't going to teach them anything. I agree, but unfortunately you can't just test out of required classes much of the time.
  - omegaham 5y ago
    The college typically requires a bunch of classes. You can't test out of them. This was a pain for me when I started college at 23; I'd been programming as a hobby since I was 16, but was shoved into intro-level classes anyway. I spent the classes learning tooling, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but it wasn't very productive.
    - asoneth 5y ago
      That must have been disappointing. I've also heard of the reverse part of that problem in which half of the students in intro-level CS classes end up feeling discouraged because half the class already has substantial programming experience.
- eropple 5y ago
  I was good at pretty much every academic discipline growing up (except math when I got to calculus, ha). Being held to a higher standard in the things I was good at made me better at those.

dbsmith83 5y ago

I kind of don't like this approach. I grant there is a huge discrepancy between students in reading/writing ability coming into a class, but forcing everyone to put in the same effort didn't fly in my math and science classes, so why should it be different here? Instead of being able to use my extra time that I didn't need to use in my literature classes by studying other things, I had to put in more effort to make my writing "extra extra" good. Conversely, if someone was a math wiz, they could use the extra time not spent studying math to study literature, or whatever else.

asoneth 5y ago
> Conversely, if someone was a math wiz, they could use the extra time not spent studying math to study literature, or whatever else. If a math wiz can ace their math class without studying I'd question why they're not taking a harder math class. Alternately if the math wiz want to focus more on literature (or whatever else) this semester wouldn't it more efficient to skip the math class entirely? Maybe in high school or mandatory undergraduate courses I could imagine a rationale for deliberately taking easy courses, but I've encountered students in graduate-level courses at an expensive private university that could have passed the final exam on the first day. I can't fathom why anyone would waste so much of their own time and money on a class that isn't going to teach them anything.
- matart 5y ago
  When I was in university for engineering I didn't get a choice which classes I took. You took the classes that were part of your degree. You also didn't get a ton of flexibility in when you take a course. Courses were generally offered once per year as all students would progress at the same rate.
- dbsmith83 5y ago
  > If a math wiz can ace their math class without studying I'd question why they're not taking a harder math class. Alternately if the math wiz want to focus more on literature (or whatever else) this semester wouldn't it more efficient to skip the math class entirely? ... I can't fathom why anyone would waste so much of their own time and money on a class that isn't going to teach them anything. I agree, but unfortunately you can't just test out of required classes much of the time.
- omegaham 5y ago
  The college typically requires a bunch of classes. You can't test out of them. This was a pain for me when I started college at 23; I'd been programming as a hobby since I was 16, but was shoved into intro-level classes anyway. I spent the classes learning tooling, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but it wasn't very productive.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    That must have been disappointing. I've also heard of the reverse part of that problem in which half of the students in intro-level CS classes end up feeling discouraged because half the class already has substantial programming experience.
eropple 5y ago
I was good at pretty much every academic discipline growing up (except math when I got to calculus, ha). Being held to a higher standard in the things I was good at made me better at those.