Great Stories
Montana Campus Corps:
College Students Meeting Critical Community Needs
"My Redhead" by Brian Connelly

I had one student who really hated homework. She brought to class everyday a grudge against me and I suspect all teachers about the work she was required to do. My cooperating teacher always referred to her as "your redhead". Even though she could see her obstinacy about homework hurting her grade she persisted in skipping a fair portion of it. I talked to her a few times during the semester and wasn't making any headway. Then I considered aspects of the homework, specifically the grading of it, which might serve as deterrents to her completing the work. I designed a new grading system and talked to the whole class about how it would work. The idea was to reward their effort and maximize their effort and practice with thinking skills while doing the work. We tried the new way for a week and the results were so positive that I decided to continue the experiment until the end of my term. The end result was seen in two ways, suddenly she was doing all her homework and feeling good about the effort she put forth in class, which she shared with myself and her classmates. The best part though was the smile on "my redhead's" face when she got a B+ on the test at the end of the unit, her pride in herself could only be exceeded by my pride in her joy.

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