Taking Grading Home

Sometimes I overhear teachers talking about the papers they take home to grade. The workload is crushing, I know, and many times teaches will work outside of school hours. It is a big problem for teachers and one of the reasons why so many teachers leave the profession after only a few years. Teachers are being worked to death.

One of the things I've tried to do in the last several years is cut down on the graded assignments. I may give one or two assignments per week that are graded. The rest of the work we do is strictly for learning. Kids often say, "If you don't give us the assignment, then you won't have to grade it." Well, that's logical. We can also work together through the assignment, learn it, and then use a different form of assessment to make sure that we are all on board. We work together discussing, debating, demonstrating, and there is no need for a graded assignment. I know where each kiddo is in terms of what they have learned.

Many times, what we do in class for several days will lead up to a performance event. None of the practice work is graded, only the performance event is. How well the student performs on the event is the only thing that is assessed. Last year, in my school's 80/20 grading system, this was expected. All of the practice work before the performance event comprised 20% of the grade and the performance event was 80% of the grade. One teacher in my building described it as like sports. You practice all week but game day is Sunday. The only assessment that you receive for the practice is how well you perform on game day. That is the only thing assessed.

This year our grading system is a more standard points system but the number of assignments on which kids are graded is low. Still, I aim to make sure everything I want to assess is done at school. I made a promise to myself that the only school work I would do at home is research new resources to use in class and plan the lessons for the week. No grading. I use my planning minutes at school and a little bit of time before and after school to take care of any grading/assessing that I have to do.

I remember when I first started teaching. I would bring home bags of papers to be graded on the weekend. It was no fun walking out of school on Friday afternoon because I knew I had stacks of papers that would occupy almost every moment of my weekend. That was nothing to look forward to. Now, I am a firm believer in balance and quality of life. Teachers can change how we do things in class to cut down drastically on grading so that it is more meaningful for them and the kids. Cutting down on grading also helps restore some balance in our lives during the school year.

There are many teaches who aspire for a gradeless classroom. Wouldn't that be amazing!? I am not there yet but every year I get a little closer. The kids have trouble with it because they are so trained to work for grades. It would take a fundamental shift to do away with grades altogether. In my room, we have tried to reduced the importance of grades while at the same time help kids understand that learning is the most important thing they do at school. It takes a while to get student buy-in. Slowly, it does happen.