As a teacher, my colleagues and I use rubrics to measure and assess our students’ work. A rubric is a guide or a chart that lists criteria and shows students how to do well on an assignment. Ideally, rubrics are shared before an assignment is given; the rubrics help students know and understand the “rules of the game,” and they give the students an opportunity for success—they don’t have to guess at what the teacher wants. There are no surprises, and the students are able to put their full effort into successfully completing the assignment and fulfilling each detail.
When a teacher uses a rubric to assess assignments, the evaluation is consistent, just, and fair. Rubrics help evaluate and assess complicated assignments or procedures. It means there is little, if any, inconsistency between the evaluation of one student’s work and another’s.
The Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5—7) serves as a type of rubric. Not only are Christ Jesus’ words a measuring tool that establishes and grows our practice of Christian Science, they also give us daily spiritual nourishment. Making the Sermon on the Mount a part of our daily and weekly regimen helps us realize the importance of Mary Baker Eddy’s counsel in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901: “To my sense the Sermon on the Mount, read each Sunday without comment and obeyed throughout the week, would be enough for Christian practice” (p. 11).
