Grading

Grading, grading, grading.

And now it begins. We have finally hit that time of the semester where the first round of essay have come in. From this point forward, grading will be a constant part of my life. With the exception of a stray day here or there, I will always have a stack of papers that need to be grade. I'm not just trying to whine about my work here. Every job comes with some unpleasantness. For a composition teacher, that unpleasantness revolves around actually placing a grade on a paper. I really don't mind reviewing and commenting on essay, but actually categorizing the paper as an A, B, C, etc. wears me down.

Like many teachers, I would love to get away from the whole alphabet grading system. Yet, everytime I try something different (contract grading, true portfolio grading, etc.) it has backfired. It seems to me that the problem is that the students, while also disliking the alphabet grading system, have become programmed to value that system. We in education have skewed the purpose of the class from learning to GPA. Ultimately, students reduce all aspects of the value of the class down to the letter (or the number) that they receive at the end. It's really not their faults, however. My 4 year old goes to school excited to learn. He doesn't even know about GPA yet. So, where do we go wrong in the next 14 years?

I better stop here or else I'll start on a rant about certification versus education... And I have papers to grade.

Bad day

Ugh! What a bad day. Ever have one of those days where you'd like to just start over. In the movie, City Slickers, Billy Crystal tells Daniel Stern that his life is a "do-over." This day should definitely be a "do-over." Actually, now that I think about that, scratch that idea. I'm almost done with the day, so let's just call it a "get-it-over-quickly-and-hope-tomorrow-is-better."

Putting things in perspective

Think you're having a bad day? Well, this article puts everything in perspective. No matter how bad my day is going, I can rest assured knowing that I haven't yet had a whale explode on me.

Starting over

I've decided that I should try, once again, to keep a blog. I had trouble with this on my own server, so I'm starting over on the blogspot server. I'm giving students in my Comp. II class the option of keeping a blog as a semester project, so I thought I should probably make more of an effort to keep one myself. Also, I wanted a convenient place to keep a list of their blogs.

So, if you come here seeking enlightenment, I have none to offer. If you come here seeking a kindred soul, you'll find me horribly unreliable. Yet, if you come here to view the ramblings of another person stumbling through the journey of life, then you've come to the right place.

Managing to Think

While this article is geared towards Christian living and study, I think what it says is very applicable to all of our lives. As I mentioned in the last post, we live very noisy lives. There are almost constant distractions to keep us from thinking and reflecting. I often wonder where we'd be now if the country spent a little more time critically thinking about what we're being told and reflecting on the long-term significance of impending actions. But more than that, I think that a reflective life leads to a more fulfilled life. It is so easy to squander a day or a week that years seem to slip by unnoticed.

Or, perhaps I'm just starting my midlife crisis a couple of years early.