What happened to Common Sense... in Education???

    This week while I was walking around and working with the students at the highschool where I will be student teaching, I overheard a very interesting conversation. A student was talking about a grade she got for the mid-term marking period. She recieved a D in one of her classes and according to her when she went to ask the teacher why the response  was " we did not do much in this class, so there was not much to grade you on; don't worry about it too much." In response to this the student said that she felt the teacher should get a D not  her. It occured to me that the student was making a profound point how can you fail someone for what you acknowledge is not their doing; if a student does not recieve "enough" work in a class who's fault is that? How the could the reason the tacher gave be reasonable? It is no wonder that students sometimes feel cheated or unheard in school If I'm going to get graded based on things out of my realm of control, why try to succeed?
      I know I'm being a bit dramatic and there is a chance that the student was not correctly quoting what the teacher said, but this still causes me to think about the instances where common sense could make a great difference. Specifically in education common sense could be the difference between effective teaching and not so effective teaching. If teachers stopped and thought about how they would react if someone did to them what they do/ are doing to their students a lot of "bad" teaching could be avoided. There are so many times when putting ourselves in the place of the student could make a world of difference and prevent a lot of negative things from taking place in the classroom. For instance if that teacher thought about how she would feel if somone failed her then said it was because they( the teacher) did not give enough work, how would she feel. I don't think she would be thrilled about the prospect of failing over something that is not about her performance, but is attributed to someone else's mistake. Mabye if the teacher thought about this she would have been more pratical when giving her grades. You could tell that the student has lost faith in and respect for her teacher from this small instance. I feel like that happens quite often in education; "the bottom line is if I(the teacher) didn't like it, why would they (the students)." I hope that I always remember to  reflect in this way once I begin to teach. The lesson I learned , from this student is that a little common sense goes a long way.