Hung up on grades

The last two weeks I've been grading final exams for both my classes. Surprisingly, the students seemed to learn quite a bit OR was it that I hand held them through the final exam too much by providing them with a pretty good study sheet...hmmm I'm not sure but I want to believe that it was the former. I did make it so that they had to review every lecture and article in order to prepare for the final so they had to learn (or memorize) something...lol

Well, early in the semester, I told my students that I'm "fair and transparent grader" and that "if they came to lecture, applied what they learned to thier assignments and turned in all thier work, they would do well in class."

Ok, so when I finally calculated my final grades, I realized that 40% of my class got A's. NOW I know I am a good teacher BUT I can't possible believe that all these students were "creme de la creme." Students that have done well in class, should get anywhere from a B to an A-...However, there needs to be a bit of a bell curve, where fewer then 20% (ok 25% get A's)....right?

So what I realized was that though I was told that the NZ grading scale was different from that of the US, I never truly processed it. I looked at it, took note of it and even included the grade scale in my course syllabi BUT I never sat with myself and analyzed how much "I" internalized the US grading system.

So what do I mean....well here is the NZ grading system:
Grade Range %
A+ 85-100
A 80-84
A- 75-79
B+ 70-74
B 65-69
B- 60-64
C+ 55-59
C 50-54

and here is one from the US

Letter Grade Range
A+ 100-99
A 98-96
A- 95-90
B+ 89-87
B 86-84
B- 83-80
C+ 79-77
C 76-74
C- 73-70
D+ 69-67
D 66-64
D- 63-60
F 59-0

Ok, So though I was told that a grade range of 79-100 was some-sort of A in NZ, when I was grading each assignment I tended to use my internalized US scale ("bad" 65 and below, "ok to good" 70 to 80s and "pretty well done to impressive" 90 to 100).

I found it really difficult to give an essay that "answered the question but wasn't very good" a 50, though that is a "c" grade which is exactly what they should have recieved.

Anyway, so what I realized is that I was much more of a "laid back grader"...not on principal but because I had some real issues with numerical grades and hadn't let go of the meanings I attached to them. 50 for me as a US student and US professor meant awful, fail, and "F". Where in NZ it's a "C!"

It's amazing how entreched these things are in us. I remember telling students not to get soo caught up with actual numerical grades and here I am completely caught up by them. I was really frazzled about how my final grades ended up...I told Clinton that I couldn't get my head around the NZ system and then he said something that really helped me embrace this new grade scale..." he said well NZ actually works on a much fairer numerical system....if you got atleast 50% of it right then you get a C (since C is the middle of the letter grades)." That logically made sense to me and being able to understand the new system made me feel better.

So, next semester I will be much more prepared to hand out those 50s...which may take the students who've heard that I was an easy grader by surprise!!! LOL