The midpoint meeting this week allowed me to hear from all angles the areas in which I should be focusing. I heard and processed that I should be paying close attention to making my expectations clearer to students. That is to say, I have specific rubrics and marking criteria for the visual and media arts projects, so I should be making those more accessible to students. Although a personal concern of mine is that students typically disregard printed rubrics and project criteria checklists, I would like to find some way to make those assessment tools and expectations clear to students without necessarily resorting to printing off many paper copies that will inevitably end up on the floor.

My ideas for creating this clarity and accountability in grading involves going through the rubrics and criteria on the overhead projector before starting a new project, and then checking in throughout the project to remind students of those expectations in the same manner. When delivering grades to students formatively and in a summative way, my aim is to meet with students personally to explain why they are receiving the marks that they see. The problem with this plan so far has been that there is no time within classes to meet one on one. I realize only now that these grading meetings need to be explicitly built into my lesson plans or else they will not happen. I would like to prioritize making precise times for assessment part of my lesson plans.

Also discussed during my midpoint meeting was the issue of firmness with my students. I am struggling to transform the relaxed atmosphere that has already been established within some classrooms into a more firm one without losing rapport with students. I know that this is possible, and much of it has to do with language use (example: “you will do this” and not “can you do this for me?”).