I had not realized how long it would take to grade these essays, so I only finished grading 5. I also feel like I've graded some of the essays to harshly.
Realistically, I don't think I would have taught a lesson on a budget crisis. I could eliminate those essays. I thought that the students who wrote the papers were writing at a below average pace. The students need a lot of work in order to become better writers. The work load was adequate though since I am used to a hectic schedule. I finished a majority of the essays as well as six other papers this week. I can make time to grade essays easily.
Grading my first large packet of high school essays was much more difficult than I expected. I graded my essays over a three day period. On the first day of grading, I felt good after grading the first one, but after that I started getting slightly frustrated. The biggest thing I tried to do was fight through it using the rubric as a guide. Day two was much like day one. Day three, however, I felt much better through it all. I was a little more used to it and felt as though I did a better job. I still got slightly frustrated, but overall it was easier than the first two days.
As a full-time student and waitress, I found this task extremely tedious and hard. I am hoping that once I am out of school I will be able to focus mainly on my students. When I was grading these essays I felt like the essays were merely after-thoughts, not a primary concern because I had my own studying and 40+ hours a week to work in Marion. Once Tuesday rolled around and I realized that ENG485a was on Thursday night, I felt crunched for time. As a student, I never feel as anxious as when I'm waiting for an instructor to return a test or paper that I've worked hard on. I felt like I was rushing through the papers when I should have been taking my time and honestly grading everything that was on my rubric. What sounded like an easy assignment turned out to be one of the hardest and most time-consuming...
The thought of grading essays seems to be the most stressful part of being an English teacher. Trying to get these essays graded by a deadline was very difficult. I did not finish them, but I still did not get to pay attention to detail as much as I wanted to. It is so time consuming.
The hardest thing is wading through the messy papers. All the grammatical mistakes make some of these essays unreadable. It is really difficult to decipher what they individual problems are. It seems that so many students do not have a really solid foundations in grammar and mechanics. However, the messy essays make really good essays feel like a dream. They read so much easier.
Grading these packets was stressful but at the same time I enjoyed it. Knowing that these paper came from 9th grade students, I feel that middle school students should be practicing more writing skills.
Grading was a good experience--it's interesting to see the different levels of capabilities and the emerging styles. There's something comforting about grading--it can be relaxing. Granted, there weren't 25 essays of the same subject, but even so--the students found new and interesting ways to argue their papers.
I managed to get through 2 packages of the essays in the past two days--I became ill recently and was unable to do much of anything over the weekend. I tried grading while sick, and that did not go over so well--I definitely need to be able to have a level of focus. But I found myself able to listen to music, have some news on in the background, and even enjoy a beverage while grading.
All in all, it wasn't a crime against humanity, and these students' papers weren't horrible.
Patrick McDonald's comment This mad rush of grading was overwhelming. It was taking on average about 30 minutes per essay. I was trying to grade while substitute teaching so this could have influenced the time. I wanted to pull my hair by time I finished the first packet. There are many ways that i could have made it easier on me. The most obvious is to allow more time for grading. I should have graded 3 or 4 a night. By doing fewer at once, the grading would most likely have been closer to grading each essay the same.
I've done this sort of thing before in my student observations. Last semester, I had three times where I was grading more than double the amount of papers we got in this class. Granted, those times, and this time felt very similar - it's stressful and almost mysteriously time-consuming. The packets of essays we graded here took me a good number of hours to finish (about 5 I estimate, not including the downtime I needed every now and then).
What I have found that really makes the grading process a nightmare is when you have to deal with papers that are littered with grammatical and spelling mistakes. I feel like I have to correct almost every one of them that I catch, or else I feel guiltiy that I look like I'm not doing my job. In reality, I think teachers should deal with this by having a maximum number of "marks" for grammar and spelling errors (maybe something like 10-20 mistakes/errors) and then after you've marked that many - stop. After that point I think it should be more than obvious that the student has grammar/spelling issues and the teacher should be more focused on the actual content of the paper. The grammar/spelling for me has always been the rough part of grading - feeling more like a mechanical process at times, and one that, despite the best intentions of teachers, can be easily ignored by students, which is of course a shame.
Grading isn't easy, especially for papers like this. Yet, everytime I taught a lesson last semester, I would put in a creative writing assingment - even knowing that I would be in for hours and nights of locking myself in isolation grading. Part of that reason is because I thought those students (and students in general I guess) just need the writing practice, which I think is on the decline.
In my observation classes I did a lot of grading. But the grading was not as in-depth as grading essays are. I think that many people do not realize how much outside time is needed in order to teach successfully. This assignment was a good way to give us a taste of how much outside time is needed to grade. I found that towards the end, my comments became shorter because I was tired of grading and did not feel like putting forth a lot of effort. I then had to go back and add to the grading. I learned that you cannot sit down and try to accomplish all of the grading because you will get burnt out. You almost have to do sessions of grading so you can give each essay the right amount of attention.
Since my mother is a teacher, I am familiar with the amount of grading that has to be done. However, she is not a high school English teacher. It is really important to organize your time in a way that you can give your undivided attention to each paper. It was hard for me to concentrate on some of the papers because they simply were not good. (Of course, I would never tell a student this.) I made an effort to really try to see what each student was putting out and to critique them in a way which would be beneficial. This was such an excellent assignment because it was "real."
I had not realized how long it would take to grade these essays, so I only finished grading 5. I also feel like I've graded some of the essays to harshly.
ReplyDeleteRealistically, I don't think I would have taught a lesson on a budget crisis. I could eliminate those essays. I thought that the students who wrote the papers were writing at a below average pace. The students need a lot of work in order to become better writers. The work load was adequate though since I am used to a hectic schedule. I finished a majority of the essays as well as six other papers this week. I can make time to grade essays easily.
ReplyDeleteGrading my first large packet of high school essays was much more difficult than I expected. I graded my essays over a three day period. On the first day of grading, I felt good after grading the first one, but after that I started getting slightly frustrated. The biggest thing I tried to do was fight through it using the rubric as a guide. Day two was much like day one. Day three, however, I felt much better through it all. I was a little more used to it and felt as though I did a better job. I still got slightly frustrated, but overall it was easier than the first two days.
ReplyDeleteAs a full-time student and waitress, I found this task extremely tedious and hard. I am hoping that once I am out of school I will be able to focus mainly on my students. When I was grading these essays I felt like the essays were merely after-thoughts, not a primary concern because I had my own studying and 40+ hours a week to work in Marion. Once Tuesday rolled around and I realized that ENG485a was on Thursday night, I felt crunched for time. As a student, I never feel as anxious as when I'm waiting for an instructor to return a test or paper that I've worked hard on. I felt like I was rushing through the papers when I should have been taking my time and honestly grading everything that was on my rubric. What sounded like an easy assignment turned out to be one of the hardest and most time-consuming...
ReplyDeleteThe thought of grading essays seems to be the most stressful part of being an English teacher. Trying to get these essays graded by a deadline was very difficult. I did not finish them, but I still did not get to pay attention to detail as much as I wanted to. It is so time consuming.
ReplyDeleteThe hardest thing is wading through the messy papers. All the grammatical mistakes make some of these essays unreadable. It is really difficult to decipher what they individual problems are. It seems that so many students do not have a really solid foundations in grammar and mechanics. However, the messy essays make really good essays feel like a dream. They read so much easier.
Grading these packets was stressful but at the same time I enjoyed it. Knowing that these paper came from 9th grade students, I feel that middle school students should be practicing more writing skills.
ReplyDeleteGrading was a good experience--it's interesting to see the different levels of capabilities and the emerging styles. There's something comforting about grading--it can be relaxing. Granted, there weren't 25 essays of the same subject, but even so--the students found new and interesting ways to argue their papers.
ReplyDeleteI managed to get through 2 packages of the essays in the past two days--I became ill recently and was unable to do much of anything over the weekend. I tried grading while sick, and that did not go over so well--I definitely need to be able to have a level of focus. But I found myself able to listen to music, have some news on in the background, and even enjoy a beverage while grading.
All in all, it wasn't a crime against humanity, and these students' papers weren't horrible.
Patrick McDonald's comment
ReplyDeleteThis mad rush of grading was overwhelming. It was taking on average about 30 minutes per essay. I was trying to grade while substitute teaching so this could have influenced the time. I wanted to pull my hair by time I finished the first packet.
There are many ways that i could have made it easier on me. The most obvious is to allow more time for grading. I should have graded 3 or 4 a night. By doing fewer at once, the grading would most likely have been closer to grading each essay the same.
I've done this sort of thing before in my student observations. Last semester, I had three times where I was grading more than double the amount of papers we got in this class. Granted, those times, and this time felt very similar - it's stressful and almost mysteriously time-consuming. The packets of essays we graded here took me a good number of hours to finish (about 5 I estimate, not including the downtime I needed every now and then).
ReplyDeleteWhat I have found that really makes the grading process a nightmare is when you have to deal with papers that are littered with grammatical and spelling mistakes. I feel like I have to correct almost every one of them that I catch, or else I feel guiltiy that I look like I'm not doing my job. In reality, I think teachers should deal with this by having a maximum number of "marks" for grammar and spelling errors (maybe something like 10-20 mistakes/errors) and then after you've marked that many - stop. After that point I think it should be more than obvious that the student has grammar/spelling issues and the teacher should be more focused on the actual content of the paper. The grammar/spelling for me has always been the rough part of grading - feeling more like a mechanical process at times, and one that, despite the best intentions of teachers, can be easily ignored by students, which is of course a shame.
Grading isn't easy, especially for papers like this. Yet, everytime I taught a lesson last semester, I would put in a creative writing assingment - even knowing that I would be in for hours and nights of locking myself in isolation grading. Part of that reason is because I thought those students (and students in general I guess) just need the writing practice, which I think is on the decline.
In my observation classes I did a lot of grading. But the grading was not as in-depth as grading essays are. I think that many people do not realize how much outside time is needed in order to teach successfully. This assignment was a good way to give us a taste of how much outside time is needed to grade. I found that towards the end, my comments became shorter because I was tired of grading and did not feel like putting forth a lot of effort. I then had to go back and add to the grading. I learned that you cannot sit down and try to accomplish all of the grading because you will get burnt out. You almost have to do sessions of grading so you can give each essay the right amount of attention.
ReplyDeleteSince my mother is a teacher, I am familiar with the amount of grading that has to be done. However, she is not a high school English teacher. It is really important to organize your time in a way that you can give your undivided attention to each paper. It was hard for me to concentrate on some of the papers because they simply were not good. (Of course, I would never tell a student this.) I made an effort to really try to see what each student was putting out and to critique them in a way which would be beneficial. This was such an excellent assignment because it was "real."
ReplyDelete