Grading Papers Is Exhausting

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.

Is This a "This too shall pass" Moment?

(Breathe, Jay....take nice long breaths to ease the tension and anxiety and frustration....)

I found myself with that type of self-talk a lot yesterday, as the roll-out of our MAP (Measured Academic Progress) screener didn't exactly feature a smooth execution.  Okay, I'll cut the crap and just say that yesterday was, at times, excruciatingly frustrating.

The situation wasn't helped by my preconceived disgruntledness towards the whole idea to begin with.  With that crumbly foundation already in place, the glitches and bugs and uncertainties that made up the day didn't exactly construct much positive.

I will say this, though.  I appreciated the students' efforts.  The majority of students appeared to give a good effort, and so I will hold on to that circumstance to help me get through today.  Because while we were told that most students would finish in a class period, and while I've been told that this testing would only compliment my efforts to prepare students for the PSAT NMSQT, my guess is that around 70-80% of the students did not finish.  I'm hopeful that most of those only have a few questions remaining.  WHAT I'M REALLY HOPEFUL for is that when the students resume their tests today, they won't have to start over at question #1. 

The view I have as proctor of the test just isn't very user friendly, so I really don't know how many are suspended, how many are completed, and how many haven't started.

Today, though, I at least know how to find the right class to test, which was a mystery for the first part of testing yesterday.  Today, though, I also think I know how to correct the situations when students seem to get knocked out of testing.  Today, though, I fear the "unknown".  What could possibly go wrong next?

I hope all of this frustration and money and time spent on this system of screening and detecting students that are lagging behind in their reading and math skills pays off sometime.  For now, I'm just going to try to get through today.

Homecoming Week? A Good Week To Set Up "The Wall"

So this is the south wall of Room NE10.  It's not pretty, actually.  The blue painter's tape to post all of that stuff isn't really attractive.  On the other hand, it's very functional.  It's sticky, yet it's not hard to remove at the end of the year.  And the information on simple copy paper also isn't exactly picturesque. And finally, my guess is that students hardly pay attention to any of it, if at all.

No, the south wall isn't for them; it's for me.

All the information within the ugly blue painter's tape and simple white copy paper is a compilation of anything and everything I know about the SAT.  And here it is if you would like it.  Just click on the link and feel free to copy anything and everything you would like.  Use all of it or some of it, change it how you would like, and no special reference or credit is needed.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bw_Emy4D6vuwb1FmUXZKMjAxQ3c

Honestly, putting this wall is sort of like decorating a Christmas tree.  While I admit that in my family, it's my primary role to simply assemble our tree and get the lights on, the ornaments are like memories right?  Each ornament helps you to remember something about someone or sometime in your life.  Well, the south SAT wall is like that for me.

I send the information to the copier, print off all the simple copy sheets, and with each piece of painter's tape, I organize all the information into the three main testing areas that I work with - reading, writing and language, and the essay.  And as the copy sheets and painter tape goes up, I refresh my brain on the information on each sheet, reminding myself of the skills I need to focus on with the English III students. 

At the end of the year, I'll take the tape and copy sheets and information all down.  Admittedly, they don't go in a special tote box like our Christmas ornaments; in fact, it all makes it's way to the trash.  But the little "ornaments" will lay in wait in my Google drive folder in May through August while my brain and body refresh and recharge with a little summer vacation mixed in.  Come September, though, I'll break them out and refresh the memories all over again.

And if you would like to stop in sometime and visit the wall and talk about the SAT, let me know.  I'll get you a cup of coffee and we'll chat.  Maybe you can add some information for me, help me create another "ornament" to go on the wall next time.