Late last night I look over at Chip, my computer. It was taunting me to come over and check on my grades. No, I thought, They probably won't be posted tonight. Like an unknown force I was drawn to Chip to check. To my amazement the grades were posted. I click on the link. My older, honor roll children gather around to see how well "Mom" is doing in school.
I scroll down the list of numbers. I find my number again and with my finger and I follow it across to help my children know which one is mine. I had to roll my eyes at the results. My sweet adorable children roared with laughter at their mom's grade. I don't think they seen a number that low before.
"How can do you so badly?" they teased.
"And you WANT to be a history teacher?" they laughed and danced around me.
I reflected back on the bad day I was having yesterday. Somehow this completed by horrible, bad day. I really wasn't that surprised, just plain feeling. I looked over the class to see how I compared. I noticed that many scored lower than the first test. It still didn't make me feel that much better. Okay, it did a little.
Towards the end of class we reviewed the test. A few more people stayed for a moment longer than last time. A classmate of mine and I started to overlook the exam. Again, there were a few questions off the bat that I knew I had wrong. Great! There isn't going to be anything that I can debate my question about. I started to really feel down about my score. It was deserving. I didn't study as much as I would of liked to. Lesson learned.
Then my classmate noticed we both had a question wrong and she was sure she was right and she went back to review the notes from class. We both approached the professor and made our point as to why we answered the question. He seen how we came to the answer and gave us points for it. Other students were around asking each other questions about how we came to the conclusion to that answer or another. We wanted to know how we got some questions wrong and what the right answers were. The professor was very kind in explaining how some of our wrong answers were wrong and how some could be confusing as to how the question was worded.
This one question I had the wrong answer because I wasn't thinking clearly and after reviewing the question with the professor I realized I did a journal/blog last week on the correct answer over the Battle of Trenton. Even looking at the question I was wondering why I chose to answer it the way I did, knowing it was wrong. But that lead me to inquire more about the Battle of Trenton and where the French came into play during the Revolutionary War.
Overall, I felt better about my grade and I wasn't really expecting any additional points. I learned that talking with other students about the test questions helped me see how we got our answers from different points of view. If there was a question that majority had right and I had it wrong than I know I misread it or just didn't know it. Staying after class to go over the test is doing more than just raising my grade. It is about learning more about the topics in class, it is about connecting with other students to see their point of view, and it is about coming to a conclusion as to why and how we came up with our answers whether we are right or wrong.
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