Although I manage to grade most student-written essays during school hours, inevitably home grading transpires from time to time. Here’s what my grading process looks like when I do lug home heaps of papers.
- Sit at the kitchen table, and empty llama tote bag of dreaded essays.
- Shuffle all essays into groups of five, piling them into one tower by alternating stacks perpendicularly.
- Grab blue Uniball pen. Fancy pens make grading tolerable. Giggle because the word “Uniball” is funny.
- Snap a picture of grading setup, witty teacher caption included, and post it to Insta and Facebook stories.
- Realize fifteen minutes has passed. Pick up Uniball. Bust into laughter again. Little Thing hollers, “What’s so funny? Can I see?”
- Skim first paper while chuckling. Chuckles dissolve into whimpers of distress because the first essay is ghastly, soul-crushing.
- Shuffle the broken paper to stack’s end.
- Scan the next five essays without connecting pen to paper, and hyperventilating starts. HOW CAN ALL OF THEM BE PIECES OF POO ON A STICK?????? Question career path and meaning of life. Become convinced of worst teacher on the planet status. Stash those five essays to the back of the pile.
- Search for best student writer’s essay. Read it. Faith in humanity is restored.
- Glance up and around. Am horrified by the dishes mounded in the sink and clutter-strewn house. Decide to tidy up, clean the toilets, and scrub the master bathroom’s floor with a toothbrush.
- Register it’s dinner time, have wasted an entire Saturday afternoon, and cook dinner.
- Make husband do dishes in order to get back to grading.
- Scroll through Facebook on the ChromeBook for an hour instead with the stack of papers as an audience. Their collective judgment is palpable.
- Pick up Uniball. Smirk.
- Trudge through five essays, finally giving feedback.
- Decide grading is more fun with wine. Pour a glass.
- Down the glass swiftly like a college student shooting a lemon drop.
- Grade five more essays in half the time, because wine. Uniball has the time of his life.
- Pour another glass, and lose steam quickly after, only grading two more essays.
- Call it a night, and resolve to spend Sunday afternoon at the library grading because Grading. At. Home. Doesn’t. Work.
- Tuck a wilted and defeated Uniball into bed, errrr, back into his llama tote bag house.
- Decide a blue felt pen is more appropriate for library essay grading. It would be mildly embarrassing to get kicked out for hysterical laughter.
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