I Spend Too Much Time Grading.

On Tuesday, I had classes the first three periods of the day, then lunch, then planning period for an hour and a half. Then I have homeroom (that's the best 30 minutes of the day, you can be sure!) Then the bell lets us out of school at 3:22 p.m.

For all of my planning period, then from 3:23 p.m. until 7:15 p.m., I graded stuff. Argh! I have a ton of backed up writing assignments and projects to grade.

Then, I decided to take C.J.'s advice. She is my mentor, the art teacher that has been around for awhile. I told her about my grading problems and how it was taking me hours and hours to grade projects. She says, "Let them grade their own!"

OK, I am willing to try anything at this point. I put together a fairly complex and verbose rubric that outlined everything that I was looking for in the grading of the Web Design Class's recent project. I handed out the blank rubric, kids opened their projects and filled out their scores. The whole process was done in 10 minutes.

I reviewed all of the scores and made a few changes, some downwards, some upwards. On the whole, the kids were pretty honest about their work and how well they did.

And I saved about 2 hours worth of work.

I am all for that!