Teacher Problems

I'm teaching a grad school class again. Definitely better the second time around! My rubrics are more clear (still not quite just right) and I already have all the presentations done from the first round, so it's much more efficient. But I still have the same old teacher problems that every other teacher has. Like grading.

I teach an eight week course. Over that time, I prepare students to write two big papers, two papers that are classic assignments for a class like mine: a case study and a thematic unit. This time, I broke the papers down into five parts each and assigned one part each week. I told my students that if they did them on time each week, they could submit them for feedback prior to getting the final grade.

Like 4 people consistently asked for feedback. #mindblown

So last Tuesday was week 7 and I'm now at home with 40 papers to grade (I've done like 15) and most of them I'm seeing for the first time. 15 minutes a paper, that's about 4 papers per hour. (Except when you regrade a paper you already graded, and you're sitting there thinking, "This sounds so familiar." Yes, #thathappened.) So I'm pretty much trapped here with all these papers and that's it. Except I also need to do laundry (but I have no quarters) and go grocery shopping.

I totally remember when I was teaching 4 sections of middle school writing and I'd have 80 five paragraph essays to do on a weekend. That's what I'm living this weekend. Luckily I 'found' time to blog about it, right?

Who else is grading their day away?