PLN 17

Following an inspection of available blogs, I happened across Mr. Craig’s blog entries. Surprisingly, I am currently a member of his second hour biology class, so I thought it legitimate that I express my feelings towards some of his actions he accounted for in his blog. The one I have chosen was titled “Allowing Re-Takes To Improve Student Learning”.

Throughout the article, Mr. Craig primarily discusses his policy of presenting a special opportunity directed towards his students. This is the idea of allowing sections of tests in his course to be reattempted if the initial strive for success (as made by a student of his class) was completed in vain. His policy dictates as such: if a student receives a mark lower than an eighty percent on the “critical thinking” portion of his exams and wishes to redeem their grade, they may attend a review meeting after which Mr. Craig will test the student’s knowledge verbally. The student is presented with the opportunity to “reincarnate” lost points on the section (of the test) as long as the overall percent of the points they successfully earned back does not exceed eighty percent of the total grade. In other words, students are able to earn as many points as necessary to raise their grade (on the test portion) to eighty percent. He also stated that he would not permit a student to leave his retake session unless they truly showed signs of understanding. Otherwise, he does everything in his power to truly make a student understand a subject.

This to me demonstrates true determination to teach. I believe that I am truly honored to be pupil to a teacher who obviously cares much about the levels of understanding in his students. The idea of allowing retakes on a very critical and unforgiving portion of his tests is a great. The idea of teaching is not to instill in students ability to earn sufficient grades, but to instill in them knowledge. By allowing retakes, Mr. Craig is not only assisting in the understanding of knowledge by his students, but he is also sparing the grief the student will encounter with the prospect of receiving a poor mark. Wow, he truly kills two birds with one stone!