On Grading

I'm handing back my students' first major assignment tomorrow (or whatever one might call the digital equivalent), so I of course spent much of my weekend on the grading process. I include under that broad umbrella of process the time spent actively not grading to clear my head and distance myself from difficult essays.

I started thinking this way several years ago w/r/t my creative writing activities. At first glance, it seemed like I was only spending small amounts of time here and there writing. I wanted to write more, wanted to get better at that craft. At some point, though, I realized how much my writing was being influenced by the time away from the page. Yes, those separate experiences provide fodder for the writing process, but being able to get distance from the work I am trying to do lets the ideas gestate and come to fruition in a manner impossible if I am staring at a piece of paper. Likewise, I think good grading practices involve times when one is not grading.

To be clear, I am not making excuses for any procrastination I may engage in. Instead, I think grading assignments, particularly grading essays which lack some of the clarity of correctness something like an algebra test might have, raises questions one must answer before moving on. Even if one has a strict rubric, they will inevitably run into situations where they have to make judgements calls about where an aspect of an essay falls within the rubric's area, or on which side of the Satisfactory/Well Done delineation a student should be placed. Perhaps years of experience teaching the same assignments would provide exactness in some of these instances, but many teachers modify or replace assignments as the years go on, and goodness knows we as first time instructors don't have that bevy of experience. We need to be able to clearly make these decisions, and I'd rather give myself time to think about it than struggle through it after 8 subpar essays which made me question my own teaching abilities.

With that in mind, I was unimpressed with the alternative grading style that some of the grad students mentioned in First Semester. Shirley and Anjel's interactive grading model has several problems, not least of which is the additional labor (or is it work?) that the process entails. However, I think such a process also doesn't give those involved room to think. The student comes to the instructor's office, argues their case, and that's it. Maybe the student thinks they should get a B+, the instructor a C, and they meet in the middle at a low-ish B. Yes, they've gone through the process, but what if the student thinks of a great reason why they deserve a higher grade an hour later? That doesn't fit into the process, although the interactive model seems to give those reasons importance.

Or, what if the instructor has these meetings back-to-back over the course of several hours? Surely the later students will either get a worse learning experience interacting with a drained instructor. Or, what if the last of six students makes a point that is equally as valid for the case of the first student? Is the instructor obligated to go back and apply this reasoning to the earlier meeting?

I understand that Shirley and Anjel were just trying to come up with something, and that criticizing their approach is not the point of its inclusion in First Semester. However, I do think it is representative of the average person's ignorance (a strong word, but I don't have a better one) of the importance of stepping away from a problem and giving themself space to think and breathe. As we talk about theories and processes of pedagogy, it is easy to forget the fragile human elements at work within those structures. Concerned as she is with human labor, I still find Restaino's discussions of the graduate students through the lens of Arendt too mechanical for my taste.

Basically, I think we should remember that Archimedes figured out how to discern the volume of irregular objects by taking a bath.