In order to avoid grading papers, I’ve decided to write about grading papers. This procrastination logic will make sense to everyone I know that grades papers.
There are a few ways to grade papers, each technique changing according to the time of year, what the teacher ate for dinner, the weather, how tired they are, pretty much everything. However, there is only one wrong way to grade a paper and that is the “Checks” and “Xs” approach. This is when you just randomly write “Checks” and “Xs” all over a paper without reading it, look at the student’s name, wonder if they are a good student or not for about three seconds and simply write, “Good job. B+” on the back of it and turn on the television to watch House. Every teacher has done this. If they say they haven’t, they are lying. So, now that we know the wrong way. Let’s go over the right way.
Have no doubt, grading papers is hard work. There is no end to how long you can spend grading a paper. You can check the spelling, check the grammar, check the logic of the paragraph, check the MLA formatting, check the sources, check the margins, check every little thing about it and write, write, write on the paper until the paper is more ink from your pen than it is from the paper itself. And, I know what you are going to say, people who never graded a paper before. You teach! You are supposed to do all that! You can easily spend a half hour on each paper you grade. And, if you have 50 papers over the weekend, which you sometimes do, then you can spend 25 to 30+ hours grading them. So, yeah, sometimes you need a system. Here is how I tackle the grading beast.