The Grace We Should Extend to Our Students

It’s an easy switch that can make a huge difference

Cindy Shapiro
5 min readSep 8, 2023
Photo by javier trueba on Unsplash

Imagine you are a student in a class and you have a string of zeros in the grade book.

What would you do? Would you:
a) Do your best to complete all of your missing assignments, despite all of the new tasks that are coming due
b) Do a couple of the big assignments but leave the rest
c) Decide to let the old ones go and do your best on the new tasks in hopes that your grade will eventually go up
d) Give up on the class and either disengage, stop showing up, or drop it

We all know that for most students, the answer is D.

It’s nearly impossible for a student to recover a grade once zeros are plugged into a gradebook. And it’s easy for them to lose hope. Why should they try if there’s no hope of catching up or redeeming the grade?

You might say: if the student did nothing, that’s what they earned — a zero. You might think: if a student isn’t attending my class, they don’t deserve any credit.

And up until three weeks ago, I would have agreed with you.

Let me tell you a little story: this summer, I read a book called Grading for Equity by…

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Cindy Shapiro

Cindy Shapiro is long-time teacher living in Colorado. As a writer, she aims to elevate teachers’ voices and provide insight on issues in education.