Yesterday I signed the document that makes my students’ final marks official. I very much wanted to put an end to the semester before classes begin again next week –this soon!! – even though we have two extra weeks to do so. It’s a kind of mental hygiene for me: something has to end before something new begins, I don’t like overlappings. Still, I have this bittersweet feeling because there’s no proper sense of closure: we never get to see our classes once the final marks are in and I do miss, more and more, some kind of meeting to see how the whole thing went. For me and for them.

Just think: students that require much of our attention for more than fourth very intensive months lapse into complete silence by the end. Some because they have done so badly that they decide not to see us at all –I was waiting for the visit of a student to whom I suggested that she should consider continuing the degree but she never came (I’m not just her teacher in a subject, I’m the degree Coordinator…). Others who failed haven’t even bothered to pick up their exams, as I request, which means they’re satisfied with not knowing why they failed (do they blame me? did they know they would fail?). In my other university, UOC, I did all I could to help a student finish his continuous assessment and finally pass the subject – I emailed him to say I was glad he’d managed to finish and, well, I hinted (heavily!) that I was waiting for him to thank me, however perfunctorily. He never did. The good ones also vanish. A student who got an A+ emailed me to comment on something on relation to one book we’d read; I congratulated her on her A+ stressing that it had made me personally very happy to award it to her, but she never replied to that. Um…

The fashion is for feedback to come to us through surveys answered online and preferably anonymously. Students are not too keen on that, at least their participation is very low. Alternatively, we can ask them directly, email them a questionnaire (there’s no time to do that in class and, anyway, when?. We never meet, as I say, once assessment if over). That’s not, however, what nags me today. What I mean is that I miss a final face-to-face meeting with the classes I teach. I’ve had one with a student, just by chance, and I found it very enjoyable to be able to contrast our different views on the subject and its assessment (thanks Fran!). Also, there’s always this nagging worry that the marks I award are not at least 95% fair –are my students happy and this is why they don’t complain (with just very few exceptions), or am I the kind of teacher whose grading is accepted with a groan because everyone knows I’m inflexible (am I?)? I don’t know…

Students’ surveys, which my university runs systematically every semester, are not a tool I value particularly. I have seen how all my colleagues rank (I’m Coordinator, remember?) and although I tend to agree with the bottom rankings I tend to disagree with some of the top rankings, which usually depend on the students’ appreciation of how easy it is to pass a subject with particular teachers. And, anyway, this is not what I’m writing about here –I’m writing about how I miss a post-assessment tutorial review, there! Maybe if I had 15 students instead of the 57 I have assessed I might set up this kind of tutorial, but then if we only had 15 students for compulsory subjects, I’d be out of a job… In contrast, our Fulbright visitor, who comes from illustrious Carnegie Mellon, tells me his undergrad groups are always under 12 students. When I told him that my first year ‘20th century English Literature’ subject that starts next week has 80 students and he asked me whether I had to do all the grading (who else?), I took one my more and more frequent deep sighs…

So, ‘Victorian Literature’ students: congratulations, you did very well and I’m happy that the intensive effort I put you and myself through had paid off. See you sometime in the fourth year!! Don’t forget what I’ve taught you about how to read and how to write, and good luck!