Who knew getting bad grades can be fun. Ainee Fatima, who teaches media studies to high school seniors in Chicago, decided to use memes to grade her student’s papers after she was not pleased with her student’s work.
“I was just grading and I was really frustrated, and in my head I was just like, I wish my kids could see my face my right now, because the answers they were writing were just incredibly wrong,” she told BuzzFeed. “So I was like, let’s print out some memes.”
Fatima expressed these feelings by then printing out the memes on sticker paper and stuck them onto her student’s papers.
“I was a student who was a victim to the ‘red marker’ grading while in school, and it gave me immense anxiety about receiving my paper back in class,” she told Teen Vogue. “I do not use a red marker, and I think the memes offer a lighthearted look at getting a bad grade.”
Fatima used a ‘confused Nick Young’ meme, a photo of a confused looking NBA athlete that’s surrounded by many question marks, when she was disappointed or frustrated with a student’s answer.
She says although using the stickers is suppose to be fun and lighthearted, she feels they are useful in improving her student’s work.
“It actually pushed students to look at what they got wrong and offer to correct it for a better grade instead of shoving the exam in their bag from embarrassment, which is something I used to do because I didn’t want anyone to see the red marks I got,” she told Teen Vogue.
The bad papers weren’t the only ones getting stickers.
For the papers that left Fatima feeling proud of her student’s, she created stickers from a Gordon Ramsay meme reading, ‘Good job. You get a gold star for today.’
“They’ve been emailing me and shouting me out on their social media,” Fatima said to Teen Vogue. Students also clapped for their teacher as she walked into class.
For other teachers who want to use Fatima’s meme-sticker grading method, you’re in luck since the teacher posted a link on Twitter, sharing her stickers.