Originally Posted by tsurara

So it's the "cutest time of the year": the time of year when students line up to say "hello!" or "good morning" in their brightest voices with big happy smiles; the time of year when students leave handwritten notes and small gifts on my desk; the time of year when students who usually tease me or give me a hard time are respectful and sweet.

ie. it's time for their Reading and Speaking Tests (which I grade and which are incredibly subjective).

My question: does being incredibly nice to the teacher affect your grades in things that are, by nature, subject to judgement calls and opinions?

Case Study #1:

A 14 year-old student of mine came into the testing room for his test. I was still busy writing comments for the last student in Japanese and said "can you hang on just a minute?"

him: "Are you writing comments for everyone?"
me: "Yeah... in Japanese. It's kind of a pain!"
him: "Yeah. Japanese is really hard! Even for Japanese people. I'm pretty sure that even I would have trouble writing that many comments for that many people in such a short time... You're really something."
me: "...."

I couldn't help but grin at how thick this kid was laying it on. He's in the LOWEST level class, and while he's fallen in with a bad crowd: I know he's a smart kid. I've also seen him studying for this test and know it means a great deal to him.

His final grades: A B A A

I didn't intentionally rate him higher than the others... but his friendliness made me remember that I had seen him studying, had asked me questions about the test beforehand and that he was taking this test seriously.

The question is, did I subconsciously rate him higher because I had gotten the impression that he cared more about his grade than the other students?


Case Study #2

A kid who I'm rather fond of also took the same test. He knows I like him but he didn't do anything to suck up. He asked me to choose a page for him to read: and I chose the most difficult, just to give him a hard time. He did it wonderfully and scored full marks except for Loudness and Emotion. Emotion can't be helped, everyone bombed it. But he's rather timid and a bit femenine... volume isn't his strong-suit. I gave him a B... which would have been fine had he continued at the volume he started with. Unfortunately, his voice got softer and softer after I had written the grade down. In reality, he probably deserved a C in the end. But since I was grading in front of the students, I felt terribly scratching it out and changing it to a lower one.

And I ~had~ made him read the hardest page!

Later on the stairs I heard a voice call out "Ijiwaru!" (Bully). I said "huh?" and looked to see my student, smiling. He said, "page 35!"

In this case, the reward of friendliness came AFTER the possible act of favortism.

Question: was is unfair to justify the higher grade by the difficulty of the page I told him to read?

Does sucking up work?
Do you do it?
Do you fall for it?