I had a couple students in my class last term from a local commuter college, let me call them R and B. From the start, R impressed me. She was outgoing, asked me questions on material related to the lectures, and from other related parts of her academic life. B was quieter, but she never missed a lecture, in spite of a long commute, and usually hung around after class to listen to my explanations of other people's questions, though she asked few of her own.
I tried to give both of them extra attention during the first few weeks of class to help them adjust to the dynamics of being at a different institution. But by the time the midterms were graded, I had more interactions with R, all of which were positive, and I was genuinely impressed by her academic skills. I offered her limited help in applying to grad school when she asked. This bias was only emphasized by her stellar performance on the midterm. I put little weight on B's lack of amazing performance on the midterm, since a lot of it seemed to be attributed to her lack of understanding of how things worked at this university.
The term progressed, and I saw less and less of B. Everyone gets busy during the second half of the term, I thought, and didn't make anything of it. The term ends, and I finish grading the finals. B has done a stellar job on the final, which covered much more difficult material than the midterm. R, less so. I should mention that the first half of the class was mostly material that R had seen before, while the second half was completely new.
I wrote her to check in and gave some friendly "how to succeed in college/grad school" advice. It turns out that she'd given the second half of the class about the same amount of attention that she'd given the first half. She made a few other mistakes that are typical of the bad study habits developed by students who have never been pushed beyond the limits of their ability. I sincerely hope that she has learned from these mistakes, and this experience will help in her future career.
I am not above liking students who interact with me more (because I get a chance to know them) than those I only see on paper and as nameless faces in a lecture hall. But this incident shows me that I should be more careful. Would I have offered help with graduate school applications to B as readily if she had asked, given our initial interactions? If not, is that fair of me? Or did I act rationally, since the only information I have to go on from a student is past performance?
Comments/judgements from readers are welcome.
I tried to give both of them extra attention during the first few weeks of class to help them adjust to the dynamics of being at a different institution. But by the time the midterms were graded, I had more interactions with R, all of which were positive, and I was genuinely impressed by her academic skills. I offered her limited help in applying to grad school when she asked. This bias was only emphasized by her stellar performance on the midterm. I put little weight on B's lack of amazing performance on the midterm, since a lot of it seemed to be attributed to her lack of understanding of how things worked at this university.
The term progressed, and I saw less and less of B. Everyone gets busy during the second half of the term, I thought, and didn't make anything of it. The term ends, and I finish grading the finals. B has done a stellar job on the final, which covered much more difficult material than the midterm. R, less so. I should mention that the first half of the class was mostly material that R had seen before, while the second half was completely new.
I wrote her to check in and gave some friendly "how to succeed in college/grad school" advice. It turns out that she'd given the second half of the class about the same amount of attention that she'd given the first half. She made a few other mistakes that are typical of the bad study habits developed by students who have never been pushed beyond the limits of their ability. I sincerely hope that she has learned from these mistakes, and this experience will help in her future career.
I am not above liking students who interact with me more (because I get a chance to know them) than those I only see on paper and as nameless faces in a lecture hall. But this incident shows me that I should be more careful. Would I have offered help with graduate school applications to B as readily if she had asked, given our initial interactions? If not, is that fair of me? Or did I act rationally, since the only information I have to go on from a student is past performance?
Comments/judgements from readers are welcome.
"It turns out that she'd given the second half of the class about the same amount of attention that she'd given the first half. She made a few other mistakes that are typical of the bad study habits developed by students who have never been pushed beyond the limits of their ability. I sincerely hope that she has learned from these mistakes, and this experience will help in her future career."
ReplyDeleteI don't understand these sentences -- can you please elaborate? Are you saying one should always pay more attention to the first half of the term than the latter? Is this one of the "typical" mistakes? What do you think she has learned from this experience?
I've seen a lot of students lulled into a sense of "I can handle this" when the first few weeks of a course (or more) covers material he/she has seen/mastered before. Then when the material quickly goes beyond the knowledge of the student, the student fails to adjust his/her study habits quickly enough.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't to say that one should always pay more attention to the first half, or the second half. One should stay on top of a class, recognizing when there is new material, instead of assuming, like I think my student did, that she was smart enough to learn it later. In my experience, the second half of a course generally requires more attention than the first, but that varies from course to course and field to field.
I'm hoping that she learned these lessons about staying on top of a course, and not over-committing herself during the term. I also hope that this will teach her a lesson in how to overcome setbacks, as I fear this may have closed a few doors for her.
@Barefoot Doctoral:
ReplyDeleteOh, so the paragraph that begins, “I wrote her to check in….” is about R? Sorry, I thought you were referring to B. I thought you’d realized that she was a serious and talented student after all, and were writing her to offer the advice/guidance that you didn’t offer earlier.
I don’t see what doors would have closed for R just for doing “less than stellar” on a final in a class in which she’d rocked the midterm. Sometimes people just don’t perform to their abilities on a given day on a given test, you know? Who among us hasn’t had that experience? I remember a less than stellar performance on a final in a class in which I absolutely knew everything cold just because I was thrown by the wording of a problem and ran out of time.
Precisely because students come to me with varied backgrounds and I like to encourage people to take risks, I always set up my grading schemes so that no one will be penalized by early term screw-ups if they can demonstrate to me that they’ve mastered the material by the end of the course. What I care about is where people end up, not where they started. I see myself in B, so I always try to reach out to these students.