The Take Home Bag

I would venture a guess that almost every teacher is familiar with the "take home bag." It is the bag of stuff you bring home with the hopes of working on it at home. Sometimes this gets done, and other times it is left in the bag. The bag is the burden of many teachers trying to give feedback to their kids, get stuff graded, and figure our where their kids are. I've virtually sworn this off.

For my first 2.5 years I brought everything home. 75 writing prompts? Yep, they go in the bag. "I'll grade a couple after dinner." Grading happened less than 1/3 of the time. Worse, the contents of the bag were the source of anguish as I felt like each passing day I was letting my kids down. A day more was a day further removed from the assignment, making feedback less and less relevant. At some point I just couldn't continue to do that as it was failing my kids, and was making me feel awful.

Opting to not grade isn't an option (nice double negative, right?!). Instead I've broken down my grading. I have 75 kids, since we swap kids in our grade level. I will do 10-15 at a time. During the week I strive for 10-15 a day, and then 2 or 3 sets of 10-15 on the weekend. For example, I have a pile of 70+ writing assessments. I went into the weekend with 35-45. It is easier to sit for 10 than 30+. I get tired as I keep going, and fatigue isn't good for scoring... so I take a break. It makes life a little easier, and works me towards getting kids feedback at a faster rate.

During the week this works too. We've got report cards coming up, which means 25 comments. How about 4-5 a day? 5 a day means that they are done in a week. It also means that each comment is fresh, and not at the end of your wits end. Your comments are more authentic, and likely of greater value instead of (alright 3 more to finish all of them... or, another 10..etc).

If you are bringing home the bag of papers every night this might be an option for you. Try it and let me know.