Grades. What Are They Good For. Absolutely Nothing! Students are affected by grades more than teachers can see. When students see an A on their test, or report card, or whatever they use at their school, they feel they have an advantage in life and that they’ll go to college and makes lots of money, which is good, but what happens when a student sees an F on the piece of paper laying in front of them? There has to be a better way to give a student the grade that really shows what they earned in the class.

Students who receive low grades on progress reports and tests aren’t confident in what they’re going to do in life, let alone graduate high school. Grades seem to demoralize students from improving or wanting to get any better in that class or any at all. Sometimes they’ll try to laugh at what grade they got, say I don’t care about this class, or even blame it on the teacher saying they suck at teaching. In “Freedom writers” Porche states “I hurt when I get a bad grade. You feel like you’re doing all that hard work for nothing. Then you don’t want to work anymore…” In “freedom writers” Porche is saying students do work hard for class but receiving a bad grade brings them down because what they did wasn’t enough to get them an A or a B. I agree with what she is saying because I work hard to keep my grades up or to bring them up to a B or better and only getting a 78% doesn’t show how hard I work just to keep up with the class.

However when a student gets a good grade on the paper that they receive, they should want to feel good about the work they did to get whatever letter grade they got on their work. In “Freedom Writers “Veronica states “You love school when it’s interesting… Getting good grades can make you feel that way.” This statement is true for the most part, because some students just come to hang out with friends but, for the most part you do feel that school is a good thing when you get outstanding grades I don’t think that grades are the best way to monitor a student’s progress in class because students will work hard studying and by the time “the big test” comes around they are burnt out and can’t remember what it is they were studying.

What teachers could do in class to monitor students is their interest and involvement in class and also asking questions about what it is they are learning because that shows the student is engaged in class. Tests and grades put stress on students to take time out of their own time at home, to relax and prepare for tomorrow, to be able to allow the student to give their full participation in class keeping them up at night just to study. Teachers should also try to make the subject fun for students to learn in class instead of text book work. Participation and engagement in class really show a student’s progress and what “grade” they deserve.