We have about fourteen school days left and I am drowning. I’ve got two sets of essays from my three sections of English 3. We are only about a quarter of the way into Lord of the Flies in English 2 and I have to move at breakneck speed to make it through before the day of the final. My Read Journals are backed up to two weeks ago. Vocabulary has not been as prominent as it should be. We haven’t even done a lot to focus on writing in the last few weeks. In class has pretty much been a routine of reading in our current book for about twenty minutes, discussing what we read, maybe throwing a Do First in there, and having some time to play around a bit with what we’ve read already via a poster or presentation.
While the day-to-day activities have been smoother and more planned out (I think), it seems like my ability to keep up with grading has taken a significant dive. I only now handed back something to my sophomores that they turned in at the beginning of October. One of those sets of essays I have from my juniors came in on October 21. The last time I graded Read Journals for my sophomores was about a month ago, too.
Yikes! I must have taken a grading vacation for this past month. Still, we’ve done some good work in class during that time and I feel like we’re building to having the types of discussions and activities I want to have in second semester. This semester’s grade is simply going to have a lot less writing on it than years past.
This is all as a result of some significant changes in my personal life (all good stuff, but distracting nonetheless) and the increase in students on my rosters. The slacked grading pace bothers me to such an intense degree that it seems to force me into focusing more on the daily activities. At least there’s some good to come of this: I’m more inclined to work on that handout I’ve always planned to make or to implement that review idea I had last night.
How about you? What have you noticed this semester? What are you doing more or less of? How does that make you feel? Now tell me about your mother. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, no. Please go ahead, I’m listening.