Krissy's notes from our first Brown Bag

Teaching Brown Bag 1 : Grading in Creative Writing Departments

What the people had to say

- Grading should be banned.
- At the same time, having no marks, I.e., no marks written on our assignments, is frustrating. Like we're getting high fives, but how do you measure that? Will high fives help with scholarships?
- When you get only positive feedback and no criticism, you get a surge of confidence, but when you hear that everyone else got glowing reviews as well, it makes that feedback seem suspect. It's like that here with everyone getting A's. How do you know how you're actually doing?
- Grades are given to allow for scholarships- a basis for selection. Without them you don't have a sense of where you are in the scheme of things. That wasn't the case in undergrad.
- I appreciated the no grades thing because I'm not thinking about it. In Creative Writing, it's not about the grades, but about the quality of the feedback.
- In the world you get published- that's your "A". There's an incongruity between what we're doing here and the world
- The unspoken idea here is that our thesis will pass if it's publishable and fail if it's not. Our goal here is to bring a manuscript to a publishable quality.
- But isn't "publishability" also suspect?
- I heard that the reason everyone gets an "A" is that the work that got us here is what gives us an "A". The program is really hard to get into and the grades reflect that.
- I'm more concerned about how I'm going to work on the skills to make sure I'm productive when I leave as I am while I'm here.
- Are we working for the teacher now, if we're working for grades?
- But if we de-emphasize the grades do they serve any purpose at all?
- We have to work within the system.
- The idea is that we leave the program prepared to carry our writing careers forward. Is grading helpful with that?
- The question, when we graduate, should be are we ready to be a writer to make a living or not? Like when you graduate from law school, are you ready to be a lawyer for a living or not? Some are and some aren't.
- The "flattening out" of grades says more bout grad schools than it does about the program.
- Imagine if you're the only person who gets the "B"
- We all have the feeling that an MFA isn't worth very much anyway.
- Okay so, how does grading, even the illusion o fit, reflect on or prepare us for going out into the world?
- There are some schools who go tell you to live instead of write.
- Not that many programs are available to teach Creative Writing.
- But how can we change the program?
- An MFA gets you into the higher salary range. You need an education degree afterwards- one year.
- Let's assume we do get teaching jobs. How do we grade? How do we teach?
- The idea of learning and teaching craft is like learning the shape of a house I might fill with interesting things.
- And we can grade based on how well the students are using the tools of the craft.
- A big part of teaching is encouraging.
- Last year, for example, the grade could be based on the class just handing in fiction- anything they wanted, as opposed to assignments being given based on certain elements of fiction.
- But a story has no easily delineable outcomes.
- Exercises are useful in honing a skill, that you will later find yourself using. It's like giving the students pick axes and hammers.
- What about a pass/fail grade based on the "publishable manuscript" goal?
- That would discourage risk and experimentation. The program is about exploring craft.
- What are the chances that grading will stop people form taking chances?
- So should we have a pass/fail based on effort? ANd how do you measure that?
- Universities mark on a bell curve. I'm sorry that's just the way it is. It becomes and exercise in relativity. Ultimately, subjectively, you've got an A pile, a B pile, and a C pile. The system forces you to.
- How can we say what's more important- effort or publishability? If we grade based on craft, how can we say what's more important, plot or imagery? Sometimes teachers can be wrong.
- Does there have to be a "fail pile". Why does failing students give you credibility? Why do you fail students at all?
- F is for no effort- for the ones who didn't care.
- But sometimes students don't care because they see how faulty the whole thing is. They might be really smart and just disengaged.
- If grading were shifted from a craft/publishability basis to an effort basis, effort would shift as well.
- It's hard not to feel like the grades are reflective of who you are as a person. It's hard when you're trying hard, and making steps that you can see, but then the grades don't reflect that.
- In the end, you're doing I for yourself, not for the teacher.
- Does grading make us change our writing to get the grade? Sets up writing for the grade or for the gut binary.
- What can we ask for? What can we expect?
- The department is feeling the pressure from the broader administration of the university because of all the A's and B's. There is a pressure to bell curve it.
- Would be more lucrative for university to do large lectures instead of workshops.
- How do you do creative writing as a large lecture?
- We should make it gradeless and limit the amount of courses non-majors take as electives.
- How do we legitimize gradelessness?
- And don't easy A's provide money? Enrollment goes up, and high enrollment courses bring in money.
- You can't grade based on quality.
- The whole thing is arbitrary. It's not based on art- it's just based on working within a system.
- Are we talking about fitting in to a system or changing it from within? Are we talking about a different vision for another way that creative writing could be going if we could be doing something about it?
- It's not so unchangeable.
- Maybe we should have a complete, fundamental change in the way we do things.
- Maybe we shouldn't even be part of this institution.
- But then we wouldn't have any legitimacy.