I once heard it said that grading a stack of papers is like shoveling smoke for a weekend. And it is true .. and we know it - the traditional methods we employ to offer feedback yield very little growth and maturation in our student writers.
So why do we persist and continually bang our heads against the wall?
Why do we insist on being the veritable red-ink-hawks that scrawl all of our editorial hen-tracks on our student’s papers?
For most of us, we engage our student’s essays as if we are editing the first draft of Leaves of Grass with a certain kind of Whitman fervor.
I am certainly guilty of having done this throughout the bulk of my career. On a typical Friday after the last bell had rung, I’d load up my veritable U-Haul truck and head home to hunker in for the weekend to grade the endless heap.
And probably like you, I’d return the essays a few weeks well after the fact – and on the next subsequent draft, see my students make the same errors draft after draft after draft while they witness very little growth at all in their abilities to write effectively.
And then I had my eureka moment – there must be a better way … but what new, revolutionary method could I possibly employ to give my life back to myself and to catapult my students forward as writers? What approach would allow my students to inch their way forward to become more competent and adept writers?
So, on a snowy morning I ignored the papers that taunted me and headed off to the local university library to do some research. I scoured the stacks for something that would confirm my sentiment that traditional grading methods are in fact one of the most futile things we engage in as composition teachers. I looked and looked for some golden nugget that would tell me how to do things differently.
But there was nothing.
Not a single word.
And as I continued to research new and different ways to tackle the daunting task of grading, I discovered that there is next to nothing to suggest that our practices are antiquated and ineffective.
But I knew that I was right in my sentiments. How else to explain our compulsory unpaid overtime slaving our evenings weekends away slothing through papers?
Finally, twenty years into my career and after some paper-grading-induced hair loss, I came up with a variety of alternative methods to change the face of grading within my classroom.
Since this time, I have shared my “epiphanies” with countless teachers, and now I would like to share a few of my ideas with you.
On Saturday November 13th at 11 a.m. EST, I will be hosting my Alternative Grading Methods Two-Hour Intensive. We will meet live in Zoom.
Quite literally, bring a heaping stack of papers and learn how to meaningfully and purposefully grade them in less than 40 minutes in a manner that enables your students to grow and mature as writers.
I am offering a couple of options: you can simply show up to the intensive and absorb everything that you can; or … you can bundle the Two-Hour Intensive with my Self-Paced Course or 5-Week Mastermind.
If you’d like more information or have any questions, please reach out or visit my webpage.
https://teachinghow2write.com/alternative-grading-methods-intensive/
This is going to be an amazing PD opportunity that is guaranteed to restore your evenings and weekends. And the kicker … you’ll also see your students flourish as writers once you begin to implement these techniques into your classroom practices.
Happy teaching and happy writing!
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