Papers, Papers, Papers by Carol Jago

Every teacher who requires writing in their classroom has had the painful experience of realizing just how long the grading will take.  To make matters worse, there is always that kid who comes to class the day after the assignment was due and asks "Do you have our essays graded?" or "Are we getting our essays back today?".  Every year I tell myself to plan better, to make better rubrics, to rely more on peer evaluations, or, the absolute worse solution, to require less writing.

In February I gave birth to my third child.  When May came I returned to work with one thing on my mind: survive the remaining 6 weeks of school.  The first assignment came in, and I frantically tried to locate my motivation and get the grading done at school...yea right!  So, as I slowly came to the realization that life at home would never be as productive as it once was, my goal for the summer became clear: figure out how to work smarter, not harder, and without sacrificing the quality of feedback.  I collected a slew of reading materials for the summer months to help me achieve this goal.

Book 1: Papers, Papers, Papers by Carol Jago

This seemed like the best place to start.  I love Jago because she is so practical and realistic.  I love that her advice is coming from her own vetted practices.  And so, here are some of my take aways:

1.  Find a way to make the feedback more important than the grade.
This is something I have been trying to figure out for years.  No matter how I do it, I always feel like the kids are still just waiting to see the grade and toss out the feedback part.  So, I really enjoyed Jago's ideas on making the feedback more personal and interactive. 

2.  Figure out a system for peer and self-evaluation that actually works for you.
Obviously, the easiest way to lessen the workload is to have someone else do the work.  Every year I try something different with peer and self-evaluations.  I look forward to trying out some of Jago's ideas on how to guide learners into providing better evaluations.  Maybe I will finally find a way to use peer-evals that are helpful in improving writing.

3. Misery loves company.
Once upon a time, as a first year teacher, my mentor teacher and team lead would hold grading sessions where we would get together and grade essays, projects, and tests to try and calibrate our grading, and, to be completely honest, to make sure I wasn't screwing everything up.  I don't know why I didn't take the idea forward?!? The idea of grading parties is genius and is something I will definitely be looking into with my team.

There were so many practical ideas and advice in this book that it looked something like this when I was finished.

As I tweak the ideas I read in Jago's book, I will blog a bit more about my own successes and failures in implementing them. Hopefully, I can find something to help with the dread of grading!

What I've Been Up To...

Well, I had the best of intentions.  My goal was to blog at least once a month about the changes and progress our department was seeing as we worked toward the goal of transformation.  As you can see, I failed miserably.  It has been a little over a year since I last blogged.  The reason: children.  I learned I was pregnant in June of 2013 and my third daughter, Wesley Kate, was born in February. To make a long story short, if my third pregnancy had been my first, she would have been an only child.  BUT, I survived.  I have also survived my 11th year as an educator.  Great things happened this year, both while I was at school and while out on maternity leave.  My goal is to blog about a few of those accomplishments over the summer months.  Plus, I plan to blog about my planning for the upcoming 2013-2014 school year.