Grading Contracts, Laboring to Labor, and Sinclair Lewis
It's been over a month since I last posted something. Winter quarter has been very busy with lots of projects, work, administration, and other things taking up every square inch of my time. So I want to offer a little something. I came across this wonderful teaching blog by John Warner on Inside Higher Ed's web site. The article that caught my eye, which past around my Facebook feed, called, "Students Aren't Coddled. They're Defeated" (posted on Feb 16, 2016). In it, Warner discusses the ills of grades in writing (and all) courses in college and how the desire for them tends to ruin the individual psychology of the student - that is, they have to care about As and not necessarily about learning. In the end, he says to help undo some of the damage that the system creates in students, he uses grading contracts, which he'd written about in the past , twice. The initial post was early in the Fall, a post called, " There Is No Such Thing as An Educ