During this past week of school, I had a realization that the newness of the back-to-school season was starting to wear off. I found myself getting used to routines with remote teaching, and I felt like I finally had some organization to my day-to-day schedule again. With this feeling, almost always comes the anticipated dread of the stacking up of the paper pile. Whether this stack is in-person or virtually in a Google Classroom, this pile can feel draining. I can insert other words all associated with burnout. I wanted to do a round-up of posts about grading in general on the blog that I have used throughout the years. Some of these posts are more general posts about grading categories, reflections on blocking out time, and trying to manage the load. Some of these posts are about specific ways that I work through larger assignments to give feedbacks (Hello, conferences and using rubric codes). You will also see a vulnerable post that started the blog in 2017 where I admitted that working through the giant stacks of paper is one of the reasons I would ever consider leaving teaching. As teachers, managing the to-do list and paper load is one of the most important points we make in our own self-care. My hope is that you find a strategy that lightens the stack you have growing on your teacher's desk or in your inbox. Check out these 15+ posts to inspire your grading routine.

I know not everyone is excited about planning for the upcoming school year. I completely understand. When I first sat down to start planning, (after only hearing the sort of plan in early August) I was completely overwhelmed. That being said, I tried to gather my resources and challenge my mindset in that moment of feeling like I was underwater. For resources, I collected planning materials, teacher books that I was reading over the summer, and my favorite cup of coffee. My mindset on the other hand? I had to consistently tell myself that there is positivity in this change. Some people are struggling with those being positive. I am trying to find a balance between protecting my peace and being a good listener to colleagues. I am not saying that this will be my most outstanding year as a teacher, but I think this year has the capacity to be the biggest year of my own individual growth. What I mean by this is that the systems that run my classroom down to the core are being changed. I have to change with it. Growth always comes from change.

One of those systems of change is grading. In the spring when we did emergency learning, (I like this phrase better because that’s what it was) I was convinced that nobody should be grading anything. I stand by that observation. There is even a big piece of me that still thinks that this should be the case as I continue to look at the number of students I teach that are included in vulnerable populations. My students who are homeless, hungry, watching other siblings, lack internet access, speak another language, and more. I am particularly aware of my students of color as they move into a school year where conversations about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are left as ellipsis and not periods. However, I wanted to find a way to make my grading system in my classroom fair and equitable for and to all parties. So, if you are making progress in my class, the end result is shown in the grade book and in the conversations about that progress. This isn’t about points. It’s about people. This post outlines my understanding of Zerwin’s text, and it applies her theories to my classroom model. Hang tight! You will see my grading categories, how I plan on entering things into my grade book, and my new learning goals.

The secret behind our workload is our mindset. While I named my blog and place of reflection “writing mindset,” it really means teacher mindset regarding the job we are doing each day. I just so happen to love teaching reading and writing. The way we think about assessment leads us to take papers home. We believe that we have to take stacks home to provide effective feedback in our English Language Arts classrooms because that has been the tradition. However, a change in mindset can cause us to sway in our thinking; teachers can become flexible in how and why they assess materials in the classroom. Simply, We can minimize the paper load coming home each time we hand out an assignment due to the perceptions we have about the assignment outcome. Bottom line? We control our paper. 

When I first started working on this post, I looked up synonyms for anxiety. Not that I needed a definition, I just was curious what would pop-up on the page. The word that stuck out to me the most was mistrust. As English Teachers and teachers in general, we mistrust ourselves based on our profession workload because it is a.) overwhelming and b.) important work. We come to grasp that we can never achieve perfection, and for many perfectionists, this means in our minds we think we are settling. Teacher anxiety does not apply to just English Teachers alone, but the volume of paper and grading that is specific to the teaching of English creates an interesting dynamic where we often feel behind, tired, and downright depressed. I am not putting on the table that other subjects do not have grading issues, but there is a special place in my soul that dies a little when I take 76 MLA research paper rough drafts home to grade.

I woke up last Saturday morning and said to myself, "I have a plan today." As I typed those words I chuckled because the best-laid plans are often disastrous. And by disastrous, I mean bargaining with myself to put off chunks of grading so I can take in or on other aspects of my life.  My plot involved getting through 94 argumentative essay drafts in one day. These were the final writing assignment given to my Advanced students before the writing post-tests. This was also the last step I had to take before going through test preparation and state testing. 

I first starting calling these things labeled "hop-checks" as a joke. I was talking with my teaching buddy on our plan time, and she was telling me about her "class list" system that she uses during class. "So, you just hop around with a pen and pencil and check off what they are doing?" I asked. Her response was "Absolutely, I do." Little did I know that hop-checks would become not only common practice- but exemplary practice- in my writing classroom. 

One of the biggest pieces of advice that I give to new teachers is to always be prepared. Not just the regular "I have got a plan prepared," but the "I have a plan and 2 backup plans just in case this whole thing goes to the birds" type of prepared. The term "systems" always has sounded fancy to me, but the instructional routines, expectations, and actual structures that are in place in any classroom dictate the quality of the learning environment and level of success regarding classroom management. Simply, the routines of how we do business in the day-to-day in my classroom impacts learning on all levels. I have a type of organized process for many things...and then for some things I don't. After coming to terms with the paper problem, I wanted to start by reviewing the systems I have in place so that I can take on the school year in the fall ready to give high-quality feedback in a high quantity without going completely insane.