A student stops me after class and asks how it is possible that a whole class could do poorly on a quiz and the scores not be curved. I explained that it could be any combination of things: difficult test, students weren’t prepared, poor teaching. He takes my class, but we have a student teacher who is still trying to get the hang of things, and so some of her tests are rather easy, and some are rather difficult. He would just have to adjust to it.

At this point he gets a bit angry and still badgers me about how everyone in the class did poorly. At this point I wanted to say “By all, you mean yourself and others that you hang out with?”, but I bit my tongue and just told him that the class average wasn’t that bad, and then pushed him along to the next class.

Class average? 88%…higher than I would have liked the class to be at this point. I suppose he didn’t argue the high scores on other quizzes to my student teacher.