Homework Confessions

I am just sitting at my computer procrastinating as usual. It's usual in that I have a stack of homework, tests, and make up work to grade. I absolutely hate to grade homework! So I procrastinate since it is the homework that I need to grade the most.

I am trying some self-psychology at this point. I am reminding myself of how much better I feel whenever I am caught up in my grading. It is true that I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me whenever I have all the grading done, but I still hate to do the grading. Hence, I procrastinate. Even writing this confession is a form of procrastination. Yet, I want my students to do everything in a timely fashion. I am such a hypocrite!

There is a reason why I hate to grade homework and classwork. In order to save the school money and myself time plus make the expense of buying the textbooks worth their while for the parents my homework assignments are usually out of the textbooks. This means that the students will put their work in various sheets of paper requiring some effort on my part to figure out what is what. I do require that all problems be numbered even if they were done out of order; I am not going to spend my time trying to figure out which answer goes to which problem. I also require that the student's name be on the first page of the homework, I allow my students to use my stapler in order to keep homework with more than 1 page together, and I take the "teacher's prerogative" of determining what different characters and words are if they are difficult to read -- I refuse to argue on those points because it is the student's responsibility to insure that his/her work is legible. Frankly, saving the school money by not making and copying worksheets is messy for me. I have fellow math teachers who are absolute fiends about copying worksheets partially to make the grading easier. With the economy the way that it is, I wonder how long they will be allowed to continue that.

Now, there is another way to deal with the said homework grading, and I have used it. It is to put the answers on the board and go around checking that the students did their work while they check their answers. It is faster, but the students learn to make marks that look like work when skimmed by the passing teacher when, in fact, they had done no work at all. I found that this method did not do much in the way of helping my students learn the subject. So I collect their homework and grade page by page .... and I procrastinate when it piles because I have not had time for it.

There is another way to deal with homework that is accumulating. That is to just chuck it in the trash without looking at it. I knew a principal who said that he gave daily quizzes when he taught and he would throw away occasionally ungraded quizzes when time was short. I do not give daily quizzes, so those I do grade, but I do trash some homework and classwork at times. The caveat for me is to check every piece of paper so that make up work does not get trashed also.

I do not have the same distaste for grading tests and quizzes that I do for homework, and there is a reason for that. My tests and quizzes are all done on photocopied sheets so they are not messy in form. It is much easier to go through them, so I usually do them rather quickly.

There is one other thing regarding how I grade both homework, tests, and quizzes. I mark every answer whether correct or incorrect. Correct gets a check mark, and incorrect gets circled. I also write notes and examples on their work so that I can do a little one-on-one in their work that gets returned to them. My intent is for them to learn no matter what; it is not just to "give" them a grade for their effort. (I have noticed that students "earn" an A, but they are "given" a D or worse. It is amazing how their viewpoints change about their work based upon their grade. I guess they do not realize yet that they are fooling no one, especially their teachers and parents, with their words.)