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.