A Long, Long Week.

Mr. B., whereya been, man!

Oh, it has been a really, really long week. Grades for the end of the quarter were due this week. For normal teachers, this is probably not that much of an issue. For me, it was a problem.

Here's why.

When I meet with Sue Ann, the Curriculum Coordinator and New Teacher Head Coach for the District, she always chastises me for working too much. "If you work everyday until 7:00 p.m., you will burn out and quit in two years!" she says. So I try to take her rather seriously and attempt to leave the building during the week by 4:00 or 4:30 at least twice per week. The problem with this is that I have to let something go sometimes. For the most part, I have a couple of choices when deciding where to cut the fat. Either I cut back on the lesson planning or I cut back on the grading. Well, I have these hoards of kids coming through the door each day, thirsting for knowledge, so I can't really cut back on lesson planning.

I have been cutting back on the grading.

Just a little bit.

At the start of the semester, I was pretty diligent about my grading. Things would be graded within a day or so, complete with full rubrics and comments, etc. Grading took hours, hours and more hours. Each project was taking me 4-5 hours to grade. It was killing me.

I started doing some in-class grading, wherein I get out a copy of the blank rubric and have kids grade their own. I have been letting a couple of the writing grades go, giving them "completion grades" instead of letter grades. I can't grade 20 hours per week. I just can't.

That being said, grades were due this week. I stayed really late (past 9:00 p.m.) on a few evenings to get the grades done. Now they are.

Thank goodness.