Blog #13: Grading, Boredom and Repetition: How do you do it?

Over the past week, I got the opportunity to help a friend out with some grading. She recently gave birth and she needed all the extra help she could muster up. Of course, I didn't actually assign grades, but I gave comments on some of her students works. It was a traditional essay assignment, there was a book (Frankenstein) that they needed to use to respond to a prompt, and it needed to hit 5 pages. Simple, enough. I've done this assignment as a student too many times as an English major. However, the experience was different when I had to step into a reviewer/commentator role. Gosh---it was so boring! My brain felt like mush afterwards. Afterwards, I asked myself how my teachers were able to do it for every class that they taught? Almost every student had the same thing to say about either prompt one or two. I knew I had to treat each paper individually and give back comments that would enable the student to learn, but gosh it was hard when after a couple of papers I almost ceased to care. So, what did I gain from this experience? I don't want to use prompts if I can. In my experience, although they proved a bit more challenging, I preferred papers where I chose my topic based on a singular text. A close reading paper on a text over two papers helped me to develop my concision skills and get to the point of my argument. If I have to assign long papers, I think I want to reserve those gems for periods when I know an extended break will come up. I learned that I am a slow reader, and I like to reason through my student's responses. This does not make me into the type of teacher that can assign multiple writing assignments and turn it around quickly for my students. So, I think I need to figure out in the near future how I will choose to parcel out writing assignments.