This post was inspired by two things. I have to grade papers this weekend. Also, I recently bought a copy of Real Simple magazine and read an article on How To Handle Criticism.
Grading papers is both the most time consuming and the least satisfying part of my job. Maybe I am naive but the inventor in me thinks there has to be a better way. I think that about most things, there is always a better, more effective, more efficient and/or more beautiful way to do most common jobs.
I would like to create a protocol or technique for turning grading into a much more collaborative and social enterprise. More Facebook, less rubric. I am not sure how to do this but it would accomplish several different goals.
First, it would be a better educational experience for the student. The giving and receiving of feedback are essential skills and the recognition of quality (in work, in products, in communication, in design, in argument etc.) is very important to internalize. Grading/critique by self and peers (in consultation with me, the teacher) would really facilitate this.
Second, this would make the process of grading more "authentic." Let's face it, most assignments (at least from the perspective of the student) are totally contrived. Try as we may as teachers, I think this will be the way of things in many academic subjects for a while. However, if you know you will have to face up to your own work and hear about it from your peers, that authenticates at least the assessment part of the assignment. I am a middle school teacher and it seems like the social world is all-important to most of my students.
Third, selfishly but not unimportantly, it would reduce a teacher's grading load. How would this benefit the students? Why should they care about this? They may not. However, it would make me (speaking for myself) a happier person, and allow me to devote more time to lesson planning, thinking about teaching, blogging, etc. These are all the creative and intellectual endeavors that drew me to education in the first place. There is nothing that makes a teacher better, in my opinion, than to be a learner. There is a lot of integrity in it and it allows us to empathize with the students.
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