Amber often gets upset with me about how often I seem to be grading papers. To be honest, I wish there were no papers to grade. I wish the right thing to do was to avoid grading papers altogether.
The problem is that grading papers has to be done. Students aren't going to get better at their writing skills if they don't write papers. And they aren't going to get a clear picture of the level of their writing skills unless those papers are evaluated. Even with a rubric, it takes me a long time - too long, in fact.
If I get a group of papers back in a couple of weeks, that's a good thing. I just now finished scoring 88 essays using a rubric and providing comments as feedback. The paper was due October 9th; today it's October 18th. That's actually a pretty good turn-a-round.
When there is no SAT essay...when employers say writing skills are not longer necessary from anyone...when college professors no longer assign papers...after I retire...then I can stop grading papers. Until then, the grind goes on. It just has to get done somehow.
