3/28: nice reaction

The beginning Latin course had a midterm right before spring break. The students were pretty exhausted, and a wave of viruses had just come across campus--not ideal test-taking conditions. Nevertheless, they did very respectably on the midterm.

Today I wanted to give them a chance to sink back into Latin and even to raise their midterm grades. I passed back the tests marked but not corrected, and they were able to spend the class making corrections and checking in with me in order to earn back partial points. They looked so delighted when I explained to them that they could earn points back--it was worth doing pedagogically of course (they learn more by making their own corrections than by my making them), but it was almost worth doing simply to see such happy faces. How often in life can mistakes be so profitably undone?