Last night in class there was somewhat of a miracle that happened. Our teacher came in and said that she was thinking about the recent stresses that people had been under with the news of the school closing and all of the rearranging that had resulted because of it. Because of that, she was wanting to do something compassionate for us in offering us the chance to forgo the final exam if we score an 85% or higher on our research paper.

We all agreed that that sounded good. Another student raised his hand and asked if it was asking too much to have an extension on the due date. She said she didn’t think it was asking too much, and in fact, she had something going on over the time the paper was originally due and wouldn’t be able to grade then anyway. So she gave us five more days to work on it and get it turned in. I immediately felt a burden lifted off of me. She had given us more time.

Not that I don’t still have two papers to write, and there are currently only two of us in that situation that I know of, but the fact that she had considered something she could do to make things easier for us, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude and love. My mind soon went to the 10% of the final exam. I raised my hand and asked how that 10% was going to be redistributed. She said we could just tack the 10% on and make the paper worth 40%.

I wasn’t about to press her for any more favors. I guess that would be fine. But as I thought about it more I began to feel burdened again at the thought of now having 40% of the grade be based on a paper that I had already decided I wasn’t going to try very hard on. My strategy had been to try harder on the other assignments instead and create enough bulk there to boost and hold up whatever the paper grade was. Later I raised my hand again.

Could we make the 10% an average of some sort? Like to incorporate our other assignments somehow? The idea of a final exam is to offer a cumulative representation of what we’ve learned throughout the class. By taking an average of what we’ve done that would give us a comparable replacement to a final exam. She smiled and said that was a good try but I was going to need a stronger argument. We could propose one as a class if we wanted to.

She said something about rationale and pedagogy. That sounded too hard to mess with. Really it was fine and I wasn’t going to worry about it. And then, this morning, one of the our classmates–he’s very smart–sent out an email to our class with an official proposal. My jaw dropped when I read it, at his brains, that he’d taken the time. He was checking with everybody first before he sent it. And this is what he thought I was trying to say. I laughed in awe.

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Original Proposal (Per Syllabus): Final Exam – 10%

New Proposal: Comprehensive Writing Feedback (Aggregate of 5 Assignments) – 10%

Reflection 1 + Reflection 2 + Reflection 3 + Social Identity Awareness and Cultural Self Assessment + Ethnographic Observation = X

(X/5) * .1 = 10% of Overall Grade

Resolved: We, the Fall 2023 COUN 760: Multicultural Counseling Class, should substitute the final exam component of our grade (10% overall) for an aggregate on all the writing assignments (5 in total) for which we have received feedback from this semester.

Rationale: The aggregate of our five feedback writing assignments represents the conglomerate of our writing experience throughout the semester.  By averaging these 5 scores, we see a substantial increase in the observation and consideration of our overall examination, analysis, and synthesis of the information presented throughout the semester.  As articulated by Freire (2005), the search for knowledge is inclusive in the process of creation, and this experience showcases valuable skills.  These skills include, but are not limited to, discovering the complexity of problems, linking meaningful themes, and emphasizing historical-cultural context of material (Freire, 2005, p. 108).  These five assignments, averaged accordingly, accurately represent the education pedagogy, and would fulfill the proposed CACREP Objectives (F.1.e, F.2.a, F.2.b, F.2.c., F.2.f, F.2.g, F.2.h, F.5.d, and C.3.e) and LCU Objectives (1 and 3a.).

References:

Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th anniversary edition. Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.

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