I don’t know about you, but I began the school year with such good intentions. I wrote a two blog posts that were quite well-received (one on switching back to Evernote from OneNote, and one on Google Classroom). I felt so good about this that the day before classes started, I determined that either writing 500 words or reading 25 pages of an life-improving book every day was a reasonable goal.
I managed four days, and then the first wave of grading came in: personal essays and reflections on the summer reading (otherwise known as proof-you-did-the-summer-reading), and I missed my goal one day, two, then ten.
During last year, I had tried various methods to streamline my feedback on student writing – rubrics, color-coded feedback, text expanders – but I have found that there is no substitute for personalized comments and strategies for improvements. I will continue to explore these strategies and others, but I cannot help but add personalized comments to student work.
I grade before school starts, I grade between classes and at lunchtime, I grade after school, in the evenings, and on weekend mornings, sometimes afternoons, and furiously on Sunday evening to meet my grading goals. (It has become a little sad that my main professional goal, week in, week out, has been to get through the pile of grading in as swift and conscientious manner as possible.)
When colleagues or former students drop into my classroom, I am torn between gratitude for their friendship and the loss of productive grading time. I do my best to stay present, but my brain pings notifications, warning me that I’m not going to get through the ten papers I promised myself I would do before going home.
And then there’s the drudgery; as much as I value each of my students as a unique individual and want to celebrate their achievements, the enthusiasm does begin to wane when reading the 38th of 51 papers about roughly the same topic.
So, I’ve come up with three strategies to weather the storm, to evade the black hole, to mix the metaphor:
– Give my students greater choice not only in the content of their work but also in the media in which they communicate. Clearly this is mutually beneficial: the students have choice (and hopefully intrinsic motivation) and I have variety;
– Try to be less stressed about getting through a pile of grading at school, and instead take the time to enjoy talking to colleagues and students; I will grade a little longer into the evening, and it is probably OK to take a day longer to return work.
– Use the Pomodoro method: grade intensively for 25 minutes at a time with a set goal in mind, then take 5 minutes to play Candy Crush, get a coffee, watch a YouTube. Then back to another 25 goal-oriented minutes.
So this is where I am. I am confident these new school year’s resolutions will last a little longer than my writing/reading fantasy because I know that grading is my reality for the next ten months and I really have no options.
How do you do it? How do you manage the workload and still have time to speak to your friends and loved ones? How do you provide meaningful feedback, while still fulfilling your non-grading dreams (if such things exist)?
Beyond the Paperless Classroom 