Grading has become a regular part of my life. Students turn in free writes, short writes, and essays. I read them. I assign more. They turn in more. It's a cycle.
I just returned my students' third major paper to them. This means I have graded 57 papers for this class. I then realized that I am a hard grader. Out of those 57, only two earned A grades.
It's a difficult process. A single paper can take me from forty minutes to an hour-and-a-half to grade. It's time consuming. It forces me to reflect on myself as a teacher and the things that I prioritize in writing, which is a good thing, I think. But sometimes I feel as though I've failed them as a teacher - I start to internalize the grade I am giving them. Then I have to stop.
The line between caring about the performance of my students and assuming responsibility for it is a fuzzy one. Ultimately, they are the owners of their writing. I can offer support and guidance, but I can't write their papers for them. I'll try to hang on to that scrap of knowledge as I finish out the semester. Only a couple more rounds of the cycle and I'll be assigning them their final grades - the grades that will stay with them for the rest of their college years. No pressure.
I've realized that I need to be a Latin teacher rather than a Lit/Comp teacher long term, because I *like* grading Latin, but grading English is purgatorial. I put it off for too long and then feel guilty while continuing to procrastinate. But their vocabulary sentences are adorable.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine teaching English to seventh graders. That's why I'm in grad school. I like to be able to remind them that they're adults. And, their sentences can also be adorable.
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