One lesson that has been reverberating throughout my 4.5 months of teaching is how important it is to get stuff graded quickly and get it back to students.
First, students appreciate rapid feedback. It lets them know how they're doing, and they become incentivized to do better as they get a snapshot of their performance in class. Sure, a lot of students just take the work and throw it away, but it is important that they have it to be a part of their materials that they can use to study and prepare for quizzes and tests. As we go into mid-term week, I realize I haven't nearly come close to where I'd like to be in grading and getting materials back. The reason for this has to do with my inability to make time or preparations to grade and hand stuff back. Grading takes so much time. Even a simple homework assignment will take me 45 minutes to grade for my 165 students, and that is not even really reading over it. So I tend to give assignments, and collect them, and then just file them away with all of the other stuff that I have to get to. Worst of all, I take too long to get tests back. The reason for this is the essays are really time consuming to read and grade.
What I tend to do is get so consumed in planning for the future and what we're going to do next in class that I rationalize not grading stuff fast enough and getting it back to the students. I've been thinking that getting material back to students is actually more important than just plowing through new material; I'll probably start making plans to have some down time each week (like by giving some reading and answers) so that I have time to hand stuff back. That would give me more time during the week to get stuff graded and get it back. Ultimately, it is really about setting priorities and implementing them into the course. I feel like I've seen all I need to see to put grading and getting stuff back as one of my top priorities.
Lastly, and probably more personally, I've learned that when I take too long to grade things my overall confidence as a teacher goes down. Just for me, to know that I'm not fulfilling my side of the bargain to let them know how they're doing I tend to feel guilty, of course, but moreover I tend to compensate for that guilt by lowering my expectations and requirements of my students. I'll start to excuse poor behavior, or make exceptions when students don't fulfill their requirements because after all, neither am I really. Most of all, I lose sight of where my students are at as far as understanding the material, and can't adapt my plans to reinforce areas that I need to. I'm still learning what that really means and how to do that, but I certainly can't even begin to do that if I never look at what I'm getting back. Probably sometimes I don't even want to see what I'm getting back - especially when it is a topic long past - for fear of how little has been taken in and understood.
These are just some of the hundreds of factors that I have to look forward to in the years to come as I learn just what the crap I am doing......
