Letter to Editors #2

Letter to Editors #2

Dear Stack of Ungraded Papers,

When I first became a teacher, I toted you around like a newborn baby. Proud, you testified to the good work I had been called to do in the world. I tended to you before and after dinner and during family movies.
You took longer to finish than I expected and you grew like some kind of well-fed yeast. When I finished grading you, students paid little or no attention to why you had earned the grade you had, even on assignments they would revise and turn back in to be graded again.
I need you, to insure accountability, to make sure students are producing compositions, but you and I both know that the real learning happens in the classroom day to day and in the act of the student creating the paper that is now sitting in a pile for me to grade.
You take time away from curriculum creation and refinement, face –to-face in process interactions with kids, and personal creative pursuits that expand my knowledge of and love for my subject area.
You give feedback too late. You further the myth that human potential can be quantified by a number or a letter. You distract student focus from the wonder and curiosity that leads to leaning that improves us and lasts.

I’m looking for ways to shrink you and still have students writing and creating.


Liz