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To me, grades are the biggest problem that we contend with as we help to shape an egalitarian classroom. On one hand, the process of engaging with student work – prompting ideas (the assignment), offering conversations in office hours and class to refine the approach, and offering feedback and (possibly) revision opportunities – is at the core of a conversational, enriching classroom. Drawing on bell hook’s notions of pedagogy rooted in love, I believe that honest and generous engagement with a student’s work is at the core of assessment when done correctly. I am excited by the ideas of ungrading, but given that many of us work in institutional contexts that do not support these practices, I have had to confront the question: how do we grade, and grade with rigor, while not lapsing into authoritarian practices?First I’d say we need to accept that this often creates the somewhat frustrating dynamic that my title alludes to. With the egalitarian practices outlined in my previous blog post, students occasionally have the perspective that I’ll be an “easy” grader. After all, I am flexible with deadlines, offer affirming comments throughout class, and frame my teaching on building skills they already possess rather than corrections or an exposure of deficiency. Yet, staring down at lengthy comments and a B-, students sometimes feel confused or even betrayed. They thought I liked them! At first, this attitude really bothered me – and sometimes it still does. But try as we might to decouple rigor from authoritarian approaches, we have to contend with the fact that these two things are often synonymous in students’ eyes. In other words, being kind but still rigorous remains a bit of an anomaly. Therefore, we need to first practice patience because we’re operating in a system that usually only has room for “nice, easy” teachers or “tough but fair” (or just tough) teachers. Getting through the “nice person, but…” comments can allow us to press on and continue to have a rigor rooted in egalitarian love. Perhaps one day it will be “nice person because she’s a rigorous grader,” but for now, I try to enjoy the experience that may lead to this transformation.What does this look like? Borrowing from ungrading/labor grading, I aim to involve my students as much as possible in crafting the assignments themselves, assessing their own work, and building in responses to my feedback so that it becomes less of a “hand off” (described elegantly by Freire as the “banking model”) and more of a collaboration. In seminar classes, my students and I collaborate to make a participation rubric based on their feedback on quality discussions. They submit their own assessment of their participation frequently, which levels the grading (i.e., they are accountable to themselves rather than seeing me as the arbiter of what “counts”) and creates a dynamic of community in which contributing becomes less about a grade and more about building quality, in-depth discussions together.When assigning papers, I often have students work to create their own questions, meet with them one-on-one (during regular class time for those of you worried about extra labor!), give extensive feedback on what worked, what could be improved, and specifically how to improve it. Following this, students have the opportunity to revise, and in their revisions, they include reflections on my feedback. Perhaps most important, I ask “What was the biggest issue as you see it, and were you worried about it coming in, or was my feedback a surprise to you?” I find this question is particularly effective for leveling authority and maintaining rigor as it reveals any moments in which a student is blindsided by a grade or comment. Such a moment is important to respond to when thinking about anti-authoritarian practices. While I often want to reply, “Well, I’m the expert, so listen!” I now use this as an opportunity to discuss with students the conversational and collaborative nature of learning: some things are only revealed when we are vulnerable enough to trust others to read and think with us. There are some areas of growth and improvement we cannot see and we depend on the generosity of others to work with us. And sometimes, professors get it wrong too – I have had moments where a student objects to my characterization of their work, and upon rereading, I realized that I was tired or unfocused when I read it the first time. Again, egalitarian classrooms allow for an exchange like this without feeling like we’ve compromised our expertise or authority, but rather allows a moment for vulnerability and true transformation.In an ideal world, I think this feedback and conversation could take place in the absence of grading. But in the world and institutional contexts almost all of us operate in, shifting the narrative, allowing students in, and creating opportunities to emphasize process and growth over each individual attempt allow us to maintain standards, rigor, and knowledge, but from a place of care, collaboration, and, yes, love.