Thursday is our last Class Day before the Christmas break, and I have mucho grading to do. Because I only passed back one set of papers to my Intermediate (college prep) writing class last class, I have double grading to do for my larger class, plus papers for my Advanced (honors) class as well. So I had 35 papers to grade over the past two weeks; I have 23 finished and 12 yet to go -- which means I will have to grade those tomorrow. I can do four or so between classes on Thursday as I have already completed the grading for the Advanced class. So if I can do 8-9 tomorrow, I should be in good shape.
The issue lies in the time I take in grading essays. I write copious comments to each student, both marking portions of the essays with encouraging and corrective comments, plus adding a summary of my response at the end of each paper. With some of these papers ending up at five pages long at times, I can get through three to four papers per hour. It's time-consuming -- and I simply don't see how public school teachers can possibly keep up with student papers when they have up to 160 pupils each semester. When I taught a general ed requirement literature class at Point Loma of 80 students, I remember facing a stack of essays with great trepidation; it took seemingly forever to grade those papers!
So besides educating our own four students tomorrow, helping J make two dozen Rice Krispy treats to take to his cooking class Thursday that they will ship to soldiers in Iraq, plus the boys have piano lessons, and I have papers to grade. So I may not come up again for air until after Class Day and perhaps even after Friday, our last day of school until January 7. We started school two weeks early so we could take three weeks off for Christmas and two weeks for Easter. I'm definitely ready for a break after completing 17 weeks (nearly half!) of our home school. But I'll have to wait to rejoice after Friday, and definitely after I finish grading these papers....
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