Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Efficiency

After my last class of the day today, two students stayed behind to discuss their progress. I took out their latest tests and we went over the tests together. I pointed out where they met the standards and where they were close, as well as where they fell short. We clarified some ideas, I gave out some (additional) practice work, and we arranged reassessments.

Then I went to my PLC meeting, which is focused on improving the workflow so that teachers have more time for teaching. (One of the things we've been working on is reducing the amount of time we spend at the copy machine.) We're trying to find out what our colleagues would find most useful, and one (among many) of our ideas was streamlining grading somehow. At the time, I thought that would be great. Who wouldn't want to spend less time at home, writing comments on papers that will get stuffed into backpacks and ignored? But as I was thinking about it tonight, I decided that I don't need to streamline grading at all. I need to slow it down. I need to spend more time grading with my students next to me. I need to talk to them as I'm grading their work, so that the feedback cycle is timely and my comments (and their responses) have a better chance of being listened to, as well as heard...

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