Professor too lenient on students

[laconia]

I have a TA position wherein my main duty is to grade student papers. They are senior level undergraduates in an art program, currently writing their papers for their capstone design project.  I have approximately 35 papers to grade, and so far, almost every single one of them has fairly significant grammatical and structural errors.  My issue is that at the beginning of the course the professor said to be "lenient" in my grading, and the lowest they will allow me to grade is a C.  Honestly, most of them are C's or worse, in my opinion, but I don't want to go over the professor's head.  I'm really annoyed that these kids are getting a pass at having crappy writing. I think this is a big issue for college aged students who will have to eventually go out into the workforce. Why is bad grammar and writing considered acceptable at the college level? I could understand if it was a few students here and there who had difficulty with writing, but this is almost every single student in the class. I am doing my best to correct all of the errors, red-lining the heck out of their papers and making comments, but I am not very hopeful that simply making comments will really teach them. I feel like they need a complete overhaul lesson in writing, but that's way outside the scope of my work (and frankly, abilities - I know how to write, but not so much how to teach).

Edited March 16, 2017 by laconia

[Sigaba]

2 hours ago, laconia said:

I have a TA position wherein my main duty is to grade student papers. They are senior level undergraduates in an art program, currently writing their papers for their capstone design project.  I have approximately 35 papers to grade, and so far, almost every single one of them has fairly significant grammatical and structural errors.  My issue is that at the beginning of the course the professor said to be "lenient" in my grading, and the lowest they will allow me to grade is a C.  Honestly, most of them are C's or worse, in my opinion, but I don't want to go over the professor's head.  I'm really annoyed that these kids are getting a pass at having crappy writing. I think this is a big issue for college aged students who will have to eventually go out into the workforce. Why is bad grammar and writing considered acceptable at the college level? I could understand if it was a few students here and there who had difficulty with writing, but this is almost every single student in the class. I am doing my best to correct all of the errors, red-lining the heck out of their papers and making comments, but I am not very hopeful that simply making comments will really teach them. I feel like they need a complete overhaul lesson in writing, but that's way outside the scope of my work (and frankly, abilities - I know how to write, but not so much how to teach).

You've been hired to do a job. You've been given definitive guidance on how to do the work. You've not been hired to have a patronizing attitude towards your professor or the students or to fix what is "wrong" with college today.

I think that you would serve your own interests well to stay in your lane and to avoid thinking that you know how your boss should do the job better than he/she does, especially if such thoughts get you in the "I don't want to go over the professor's head" neighborhood. These kinds of thoughts have ways of manifesting themselves in ways that will not benefit you.

Down the line, when you are a professor, you can run the class your way (and supervise TAs who know better than you).

As for your writing abilities relative to your students, if you received the above paragraph from one of them, what corrections would you make? (Subject verb agreement? Verb tenses? Run on sentences? Poorly organized argument?) 

[TakeruK]

I understand your frustrations, but ultimately, this is not your call to make. If you would like, you could present your concerns about the students' performance. You could also suggest an alternate grading scheme and justification on why you believe this grading scheme will help students beyond this course. It might even help if you can find grading schemes for similar courses in the same department, i.e. something that shows the prof that this particular course is different from the rest of the department.

However, take the above advice with care. Remember that:
1) You are not the professor. You are the TA. Depending on your relationship with this professor, you may be able to suggest alternatives or improvements but it is not your call to make. It's the professor's prerogative to decide on their grading scheme. You don't have to agree with it, but you do have to implement it. Also, I am not sure you have a sound case here---there are some good pedagogical reason to not expect/demand/grade for perfection in order to achieve other learning goals. 

2) You only have so much "political capital" for lack for a better phrase. Sure, this is a potential fight you might be able to pick. And, depending on what the prof is doing exactly, perhaps you might have a valid argument with the DGS or the Department Head. But this is likely not a fight you can win and it's likely going to hurt you and your students in other ways down the road. Personally, this is not a battle I'd pick.

3) There might be other things going on. Maybe the department has decided that this particular course is supposed to be the "GPA booster" course that students from other departments take to get a GPA boost. This might increase enrollment in the department's courses, resulting in more money for the department. Maybe the prof doesn't like it either, but they are being forced by the powers that be. And maybe the department itself doesn't want to be doing this, but the University is imposing this funding scheme and they have to do it to get the money. I'm drawing up a kind of extreme scenario, but I'm just pointing out that you might not have all of the information. Either way, these problems are above our "pay grade" as a TA and I'd leave them alone.

4) Finally, I do think there are extreme cases that merit exceptions to the above. If the professor is engaging in unethical grading schemes, or doing really extreme things like asking you to only award As, then that might be a reason to check in with someone else to make sure everything is okay. Being a TA means that the prof is the boss and you need to do your job as assigned, but you do also have responsibility to the department and academic integrity. So, I wouldn't take the "do what your boss says" advice to the extremes, but this scenario is not an extreme. 

[rising_star]

On 3/15/2017 at 10:44 PM, laconia said:

 I am doing my best to correct all of the errors, red-lining the heck out of their papers and making comments, but I am not very hopeful that simply making comments will really teach them. I feel like they need a complete overhaul lesson in writing, but that's way outside the scope of my work (and frankly, abilities - I know how to write, but not so much how to teach).

Serious question: What do you think the students do upon receiving your paper full of comments and red lines? Do you think they learn anything at all from all those comments or that they are demoralized and/or confused about how best to proceed? My recommendation is that you NOT focus on grammatical errors and correcting those. That's editorial work. Maybe do it for a page or two but don't let that be the vast majority of your comments because that makes it too easy for students to focus on those and not the bigger errors in their writing.

This Youtube video has really good tips on giving writing feedback. Right now, you're doing the mechanical things PLUS trying to do the other things. If you actually want to help students improve their writing, you'll want to give what he calls global feedback. You also want to do more than just identify issues but move to suggesting solutions or identifying the rhetorical options for them. 

[AP]

I echo these three pieces of advice and let me just add: As an instructor/future professor, you ultimately want your students to succeed and learn. Hence, I would give some feedback to your professor on the lines of: "I have observed many students find it hard to construct an argument/be coherent with verb tenses/etc. Could you remind the class the writing center is available?" Like that, you are sticking to your job, grading, but you are also thinking about how to help students learn (and show they have learned) in a better manner.

[thelionking]

Because you are a TA and not the professor, I think it is best to follow his explicit instructions.  It is not your call to decide on the grading rubric. If the writing problems are so bad, it sounds like a larger systemic problem that won't be a quick fix anyway. Some students might be making errors out of carelessness (because they pulled an all-nighter and were exhausted or did the paper in a hurry), while others might genuinely have serious writing issues. 

I think that informing the students about the school's writing centre is good idea. Some people might use it and many probably won't and there isn't much you can do about it in this situation. You might want to take a different approach... You could let them know that you are concerned about their writing skills as other profs might not be so lenient about their errors and it also won't look good to an employer when they get a job and have to write a report for their boss. You could mention that having lots of spelling and grammatical errors is distracting to you and it slows down your ability to grade their papers. Out of courtesy to you, and if they want to put you in a good mood while you are evaluating their papers, it would be wise if they took the time to proofread their assignments and paid more attention to their grammar and spelling. You might see some improvement if you try this approach.

[ThousandsHardships]

I think you're focusing too much on the technical issues. Unless the same grammatical errors are made consistently, they could simply be careless mistakes. If you're grading a paper, I would recommend focusing on the overall argument and structure instead.

Another thing is that you need to take your students at their level. If everyone is at a C or below, then no one should be at a C or below. As much as teachers don't like to admit it, part of grading is comparing. Just as you wouldn't expect a 2nd grader to write like a college student, you also wouldn't expect an average undergrad to write like an advanced grad student. Your job is to point out where the students have done well, and where they can improve. Give concrete, directional guidance, and if a student clearly does better than his or her peers, then this person deserves that A even if it isn't of the quality that you wanted.

Finally, don't get discouraged. Remember that you're used to reading papers and articles and books written by people who were the top of the top. I don't know about your field, but in mine, the majority of people who're publishing well-read articles or books already have at least a tenure-track position. This means they've gotten into college, likely emerged in the top 5-10% of their class, outcompeted other top college graduates for PhD programs, were strong enough to get through their PhD program, and became some of the very few PhD graduates who were talented enough to get a faculty position. Oh, and their work has gone through massive editing by multiple people who are equally talented as they are. It's completely normal that your students aren't producing work of this quality, and just because they're not doesn't say anything about the quality of the student population or of the instructors.

Edited April 5, 2017 by ThousandsHardships

[justpayingthebills]

just writing to say i sympathize fully. i find this especially irritating as someone who went from doing my BA in a very strict public university where one could get a D or an F, to an elite private school where D's don't exist and F's just mean the course gets deleted from the student's transcript. it's not asking too much to expect these kids to know how to use spell check or, like a user above suggested, visit the writing center. it's disrespectful to you as an instructor to have to read that.

on a similar note, i just want to vent that it's also infuriating when the prof who ISN'T DOING THE GRADING grants students extensions without consulting, gee, i don't know, the one doing the grading? 

solidarity my friend. 

[Eigen]

No, it's really not in any way "disrespectful" to an instructor for students to turn in bad papers. It's a choice on the part of the students, and has nothing to do with "respect". Not everyone takes class work with the same degree of seriousness. It also has to do with preparation and abilities, and the learning goals of the course.

Similarly, with extensions and grading... Why would the professor for the course, who's responsibility it is to handle policies, need to consult the person grading to grant extensions? 

It's nice to give a heads up that you'll have some things coming in late, but it's not a "grading" policy- it's a course policy. 

As a grader, you're paid to do a job, and while you may have opinions on how the professor runs the course, you don't have a right to a say in it, except in times that it causes you to work more hours than contracted or puts you on ethically shaky ground. 

At the end of the day, the professor is responsible for the course. They are the ones that are responsible for the grades given out, and the ones responsible for justifying decisions made in the process of assigning grades.

[samman1994]

Sadly, at the end of the day, all the above comments are correct. The best you can do is simply state your opinion to your Boss, and hope they agree with you and work on a compromise. There is a huge political factor involved from the higher ups that trickles all the way down to the professors, TAs, and students. Bottom line, the higher ups want more students graduating faster with higher GPAs. The higher ups usually (from my experience) understand very little about the process of education itself, and in the best scenarios, leave it completely up to the dean of the school, but from my experience, often times get involved and make policies that outright don't work. This is not the professors fault however, for their hands are tied (especially those trying to get tenure). 

This also varies class to class. My quantum mechanics class had a 10% curve, but its quantum mechanics, maybe you can give the students a little break. However, the general chemistry class my colleague taught was forced a 15% curve as well, which... I find a little bit harder to justify. The worst example of this are those close to graduating  that are repeats. I.E. The guy had failed the gen chem class 3 times, and was on his last possible retake. He didn't show up half the days, so naturally he failed again. However, the dean and school desperate to get him out of the class, decided to actually drop all the fails he had from days not showing up, and only grade him for days he did show up, then give him a 10% curve. Naturally, the guy passes now with a C-. Luckily, one of the professors got really ticked off at this, and decided to pursue it with the dean himself. After about 2 weeks, they finally failed the guy and told him to change his major. Now this guy was relatively a nobody (foreign exchange from africa, very poor, etc.), so he had no one here to fight for him. I can only imagine if this was say, some wealthy white kid at any ivy league. Don't know if that professor would be able to reverse the deans decision. 

The worst part is, this tarnishes the schools name. I had a friend who went to a school that was we could say.... leniant. Both from looking at their tests/grades, and talking to them, their knowledge of the material by the time they graduated was on par with a C average junior at a typical university. This school had such a bad reputation in the local area though for putting out unprepared graduates, biotech companies had essentially black listed the school. I fear my school is following the same trend. Already companies like Amgen have stopped hiring my school altogether (this information comes from the hiring commitee and higher ups I know in the company), making it harder for people to find a job.  

Note: These are all just from my personal experience. These are just things I saw at my local state university.