[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:00:15 +0000
wa2egp at att.net wrote:

> > I suppose I'm just a grumpy old man.  Bah.
> > 
> > -- 
> > Brian Dunbar
> 
> Keep grumping.  A lot of ditricts are tyring to get rid
> of the older faculty since a lot of us remember the
> way it used to be.  The school boards rather have the
> newer teachers that were taught nonsense like grading
> with a red pen is too tramatic for the student. :)

They'd really have hated my college English professor.

A lot of people were put off by his grading.  Basically, no one got passing
grades on the papers we wrote.  At first everyone complained, and one woman
confronted him about it saying it was unfair.

He said "I'm not sure I see the problem.  You can't write worth a damn, and
therefore the grade I gave you was appropriate.  How can you expect to get an
A until you've learned enough to earn it?  If you could write A papers
already, you wouldn't need to be in my class."

She dropped the class in a huff, quite a few people did.  However, those of
us that stayed were rewarded with one of the best teachers I've ever had.
By the end of the semester, pretty much everyone had good grades.

In retrospect, it makes perfectly good sense.  He didn't use grades as a
way of keeping score, he used it to show the quality of your work.  He graded
you based on what he was trying to help you become, not what you were at the
time.  As your grades went up, you knew it was in direction relation to the
progress you were making as a student.

Something else about him too: in spite of what I said above, he was never
what you would call mean.  He was someone that students hung out with,
talked to, and remembered for years afterward.  If you've seen "Deat Poet's
Society", then you have some idea what he was like.

I asked him once how long a paper should be.  Stupid question in hindsight,
but he just smiled and said, "A paper is like a miniskirt.  You want it long
enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting."  

-- 
shannon          | Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. -- Unknown