The Teacher from the Black Lagoon

<p>I have an AP English teacher who is a total monster. The class is mostly graded based on essays, so the grading is largely subjective. Well, she's a LITERATURE SNOB whose best student (gradewise) has a B- while I have a C+.</p>

<p>Otherwise I am a very good student with Ivy League aspirations...is there any way this travesty/tarnish on a good record be softened due to the extreme difficulty of the class?</p>

<p>By comparison, the other AP teacher has a solid number of students with A's and most of the rest have B's...typical of an honors class.</p>

<p>By the way, she won't grade on a curve, so there goes that idea.</p>

<p>She sounds like my son's AP English lit teacher, only he has no other options! Can you switch out of her class?</p>

<p>Subjective grading...My daughter had an English teacher in 9th grade who would give her B's unless she espoused his political views (hers were the opposite). It was comical. Each time she parroted what he wanted to hear, she got an A. What else could she do? When did politics become so entwined with English literature?</p>

<p>I felt she was doing herself a disservice by not being intellectually honest. On the other hand, he really didn't deserve her honesty because the way he ran his class was deplorable. She took it as an intellectual exercise to come at things from a completely different point of view.</p>

<p>If you can't get out, figure out what she wants and give it to her if you can. Perhaps you could get some insight from other students who had her previously and received A's.</p>

<p>It's the same way in my school, I have the "easy" english teacher, where 4 to 6 kids get As and the rest get Bs or C+. In comparison, there is a teacher in which one kid has gotten an A on an essay, and they've written 6 or 7 essays in this quarter while we've only written 2. One possibility is to ask for a rec from this teacher. A kid from last year who was getting a B in her class got into Columbia and Brown when his grades were barely in the top ten percent, he credited her rec largely for it.</p>