About a week and a half ago, I posted a rant about testing. Well, there's been developments. Due to the outrage that most students in out class felf after that test, we arranged for a group conference with our teachers about it with the Department head to back us up. The Department head insisted that we meet with the teachers first, and if that didn't produce an acceptable resolution, she'd join us for a second meeting. She also sent along some basic ground rules for that meeting.
At the scheduled time, I showed up along with 4 others (out of a class of 25). We sad down and started talking. The teachers let us all tell about our frustrations before they responded. Then we listened to their response. After that we just discussed the situation and tried to come up with resolutions. Some things we realized couldn't be resolved, because there's only one day left in class. Other things could be and we decided on the best ways to do that. Most though fell into the category of "too late for this class but will be changed for the next one."
After all was said and done, we'd spent an hour and a half talking and I walked away feeling a lot better. I wish that more students had joined us. Because I know that there isn't anything that I can tell them about what happened in that meeting that will give them the same feeling of fairness that I got. Besides which, it frustrates me that they were willing to bitch about the class, but not willing to do anything to make it better. Now it feels more like they just wanted to complain.
Posted by Becca at December 5, 2003 12:12 PM