An Apple for the Teacher

falling apples, link

We're all familiar with the apple for the teacher, waiting for her on the desk all polished and shiny. Someone was trying to get into her good graces, perhaps Tom Sawyer, hoping his attention would reflect on his treatment, on his grade. It's an old-fashioned image, but the problem remains with us: is it ok to give it to her?

I boast that I was a popular enough teacher that once, when I walked into class, there was indeed an apple on my desk, a delightful prank.

But the first time it really happened to me was at the nontraditional college I taught in. The woman was not a particularly good student, her ideas weren't particularly interesting, her language skills weren't particularly great. She was average, let's say a C+. She was quiet in class, so quiet that I admit I never thought about her. Of course like a good teacher I tried to draw her in, but it never worked too well. When I thought of the class in my imagination, she wasn't in the picture. It was C+, sewn up.

She came in one day close to the end of the semester, and out of the blue she surreptitiously handed me a small bag so the others would not see it. in the bag was a lovely malachite necklace, deep green with a complex stratified pattern, the beads delicately graduated. "It's from my country," she whispered, and slunk guiltily to her chair.

All polished and shiny

As this had not happened to me before, I didn't have a reaction at first. I had not figured out the consequences. But her guilty movements alerted me immediately that she had done something wrong. My understanding of what had just happened, began from there.

The first effect was that now I felt guilty. I had been put into a compromising position, forced into a passive crime, merely because somebody handed me a bag.

I forgot all about it until it came time to assign final grades for the semester. It was time to calculate hers. She seemed to me a solid C+ as I said, but she had managed to pull off a couple of B- 's later on, and my system of grading was to put more emphasis on later grades, which showed the student had learned and improved.

Those B- 's were not enough to push her over that precarious edge between C+ and B-. But a case could be made, weak but plausible, for pushing her final grade over that edge.

The hardest choice that a teacher can face
George Tice, link

The C+/B- dilemma is the hardest choice that a teacher can face (more on that in a different post). No other grading choice rivals it. And I was sitting there, thinking about those beads.

Now, often at the end of a semester a grateful class will pool their money to buy the teacher a gift, generally a planner for a female and a wallet for a male. However, that is a different phenomenon, it is a gesture of thanks and respect, not a bribe.

If my student was someone I'd had conferences with, or who'd written work that I deeply responded to, I'd have a stronger interest in how well they did, and the decision would have been even harder to make. A teacher doesn't want feelings to interfere with grading.

Something similar was operating here. The way she sneaked that necklace, ultimately, I'm afraid, ironically worked against her. It was not a gift of respect. It was pure bribe. It gave me a bad feeling, but again, I wanted in spite of it to grade as fairly as I could; and I maintain that she deserved her C+, but who knows what unconscious forces were at work.