At the end of last semester, I was sitting in my office as a lot of typical hustle-and-bustle took place outside. While sitting there or walking the halls to class, my mailbox, or wherever, I heard snippets of conversations between faculty and students. At various points, I heard different professors say things like, “On this paper, I gave you a B-” or “On the final, if I give you an A, your final grade still will not be higher than a C+.” I did not think much of such comments until I was returning revised essays to my students by email. When I grade revisions, I do not comment on the essays themselves because students have already gotten ample comments from me earlier. Instead, in my email, I give a paragraph summarizing what I see in their revision and end with a sentence that says, “On this essay, you have earned a B+.”
I am not sure where I picked up saying “You earned” as opposed to “I gave you,” but looking back through my email archives, I see that I have been doing it for a while. But I do remember having my own conversations with faculty when I was a student, and they would say, “I gave you a B on this essay, and here’s why.” But they were not giving me a B. They were giving my essay a B. Or, more exactly, I earned a B on that essay. Or even more exactly, my essay earned the B. One caveat that I have heard throughout graduate school and into my career is that you are not your writing. In other words, if you submit an essay to an academic journal, and the editors reject it, you need to remember that they are rejecting the essay, not you. This is something some of us need to remember so that we do not get bogged down into thoughts like “I suck,” “I’m unoriginal and unclear,” or “I’m just plain stupid.” Oh, I still have such thoughts, but I have learned not to let them get too far in my head before reminding myself that it is my work that failed this particular go around. It does not mean I am a failure.
I think this is a point we need to keep in mind with students. They are not their grades, and we do not give them grades. They earn them. Actually, their work earns the grades. And, if we make our grading criteria clear, students should recognize their active role in earning those grades. Many students have spent years trying to making teachers happy, and many teachers and professors treat grading as a process that is about making them happy. We, however, have to shift the emphasis back to the students. They receive an assignment that hopefully has clearly-outlined expectations and grading criteria. They have to do the work to earn the grades.
I am not sure if students recognize their role in producing work that earns the grade it earns when I tell them “You earned this,” and writing this post has made me wonder about making these thoughts more explicit to them. For now, though, I wanted to present these thoughts to fellow faculty and have us think about the subtler messages behind the comments we give them. For me, “you earned” works more effectively than “I gave you.” But how about you? Let us know in the comments!
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23 Responses to You Earned It!
leingang - January 20, 2011 at 8:11 am
I like it. It’s a good way to reinforce the attitude that you are assessing the student’s work and not deciding how much you like him or her personally.
finleyt - January 20, 2011 at 8:26 am
Reinforcing the notion of *earning* the grade and that you’re grading the artifact, not the individual, strikes me as important. I’ve found that having students self-assess before you receive the work–using a dichotomous rubric–reduces the emphasis on the professor-student relationship.
-Todd
jaslawlib - January 20, 2011 at 8:28 am
Heh. My mother is often very careful about her language – she prefers, “I’m proud for you” instead of, “I’m proud of you,” because she didn’t earn whatever it is she’s complimenting the other person on achieving.
I like, “You earned a __” for all the reasons you state and for another, possibly more subtle one. The news and blogosphere are full of stories of entitled students who think that showing up is enough. Your words are a reminder that they don’t get grades for who they are, or for gracing the classroom with their presence: they get grades for the work they do.
kerri_provost - January 20, 2011 at 8:35 am
Yes! I have been doing this forever, maybe because I heard that in college and it resonated.
Something that confounds the students is when I explain how they earn grades in my class. I tell them that everybody starts with a zero and that unless they hand in work that fulfills the criteria, the grade remains there. Some freak out because in their brains, they believed that they started with an ‘A’ and that it only changed if the teacher didn’t like them or if they failed a test. I have never understood where this “logic” originated, but many students believe that’s how it works. When they ask about grades, I explain this again. “There’s no averaging of anything together. So far, we had two papers worth ten points a piece. Add together the grades you earned. You also had such-and-such project, which was worth 20 points. Add the grade from that. We have not finished the course yet, so think about how many points you would still have to earn to pass/get your desired grade.” I know it’s upsetting to them, but I want them to really grasp that grades are earned, not given, and definitely not randomly assigned based on a professor’s whims.
drjeff - January 20, 2011 at 10:00 am
True. Simple. Beautiful.
akajb - January 20, 2011 at 10:27 am
Kerri, interesting point of view. I’ve always approached classes (I’m a grad student) as having started with 100%. Everytime I get a mark back, I’ve “lost” x percent. So If I get 18/20 on the first assignment, the highest I can now get in the class is 98% and so on.
However, this past semester, for the course I was TA-ing, we had a spreadsheet keeping track of the grades and of course the total was working the way you were discussing, since it added up all the marks currently given and the marks yet assigned were all 0′s.
I’m not sure what direction makes more sense – to view it as adding up vs losing marks. I guess maybe it just comes down to what motivates you more. For me, I think that’s losing as I don’t want to lose more than I have to. I find adding up can give you a false sense that you can still get x, when really, maybe you should be expecting to only be getting an average of 80% (or 90% or 70%) of the remaining marks.
daiya - January 20, 2011 at 11:25 am
I think there’s two things here:
earned vs giving
you vs the essay
Doesn’t “You earned a B on this essay” instead of “This essay earns a B”, reinforce that it’s the student, not the essay?
I do try, but very unsystematically, to avoid saying that I give grades.
drnels - January 20, 2011 at 1:11 pm
@Daiya, it wasn’t until I wrote this post that I realized that, yes, putting “you” in it as I have been could overempahsize the person and not the work. Though I will say that I have not had students respond in ways that suggest that they feel stung personally. Because I teach writing and emphasize revision, I think they get that this is a process and not about them but about what choices they make during the process. But you do raise a good point I hadn’t thought of until I wrote this.
lorinbarnold - January 20, 2011 at 2:01 pm
akajb – I think it’s important for students, particularly in a writing based class, to understand that papers don’t begin at 100 and “lose” points. When they approach it with that perspective, they don’t grasp that there are style and content differences that can’t be stated in a form of “lost points,” but that still affect the grade. It’s frustrating to me, as an instructor, and to the students when they don’t understand that an B on a paper does not mean that they “lost” 15 points, but that they produced a good, solid paper.
drnels - January 20, 2011 at 7:22 pm
You can tell I’m in rhetoric by how much I obsess over words and word choice, but I’ve been thinking of the “You earned” as possibly emphasizing that I am grading the student and not the writing, but it hit me on the drive home that keeping it to “you earned” also emphasizes that students are in the driver’s seat in that they make choices as writers, and they earn the grades. Contradictory? I don’t know. I’ll keep thinking about it.
mcsmith - January 20, 2011 at 7:54 pm
How about “you achieved” or “you obtained”? Sort of suggests that a standard was met.
12080243 - January 21, 2011 at 8:34 am
I’ve used “you earned” for as long as I can recall. Like the author and commenters, it includes students in the (l)earning process. But I’m also mindful that, when a student fails, I review my participation in the (l)earning process, too.
hyssop - January 21, 2011 at 8:55 am
I post my grading rubrics together with the assignment, so that my expectations are clear to students. I encourage students to do self-check before turning in the homework. It’s their choice what grade they would like to earn and what amount of efforts they’d like to put in. I do review my grading rubrics based on what I see in the homework, and give 1 bonus point for exceptionally good work.
jones41 - January 21, 2011 at 9:27 am
@Daiya, I’ve never understood the logic behind “you start with 100%.” I guess this comes from a misguided attempt to assure sudents that they can potentially leave with an A. But when students first begin a course, they havn’t done anything yet. That’s a zero. It’s up to them to earn the grades from that point on.
jhorlings0 - January 21, 2011 at 10:36 am
I agree with the ideas presented. I have bumper stickers made for my students, and I tell them on day 1, when I show it to them, that the wording is very specific. They say “I achieved an A in Anatomy at XXXX College.” I tell them that I don’t “give” them an A– they will work very very hard for it. I also point out that an A is not the goal of everyone, and talk about what a B means, a C etc. But it puts the onus on them.
mbelvadi - January 21, 2011 at 11:47 am
Have to add a slightly snarky comment: it’s probably more accurate to say “the paper earned a B” rather than “you earned a B” because nowadays, the odds may not be great that “you” even wrote it! cf the recent CHE article about the Shadow Scholar.
n2n_0131 - January 21, 2011 at 11:58 am
I like the phrasing “You earned…” for the reason drnels identified on the drive home. “Your essay earned…” seems passive to me (and I also quibble grammatically with an essay “earning” something). Perhaps a worthy compromise would be “Your effort on this essay earned…”, leaving the student in control, but indicating the the grade is a reflection of this particular assignment.
aephirah - January 21, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Another, related, twist that we sometimes forget: we, too, “earn” tenure and promotion.
pumferya - January 21, 2011 at 2:00 pm
I teach Genetics and other Biology courses. I also use the term “earn” instead of “give” when I tell students their grades. I do this because it is how many points they earned on each quiz or exam that determines their grade. I also don’t curve my Genetics class and the syllabus clearly defines what each letter grade is worth. I have students that fret over missing one quiz (worth 1% of the total grade) and they say to me “but that means I’m at 99% now”. And then I have the few students at the end of the semester, once the final grade has been determined, begging for the next half letter grade up because they “worked so hard” or that they were “so close”.
megmase - January 21, 2011 at 5:36 pm
I go for “your paper merited an A.”
aeonelpis - January 21, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I use the earn phrasing, and I include a section in my syllabus about “student responsibility for learning” that emphasizes student agency. The section details what taking responsibility for one’s education means, as well as tips for being a good classroom citizen.
I have a separate paragraph, in the grading section, that explains how they can build upon the base (75, if they meet the basic requirements) to earn higher scores. The building paradigm connects the grade with the process of improving a rough draft to increase its polish and artistry.
As a fellow rhetorician, I, too, worry about the implications of each word. I find that “earn” and “build” encourage an active, optimistic process that “give” and “lost” cannot provide to my classroom.
realtyannie - January 22, 2011 at 8:48 am
When I was a teaching assistant 20 years ago, a student earned a mediocre grade on a mediocre speeech. He came to Office Hours and asked for a better grade. When I failed to budge, he expressed shock. Because he was so good looking, he explained, teachers always upped his grades upon request.
rvbcave - January 24, 2011 at 7:12 am
Excellent as usual, Nels!