Teaching for me is making a bunch of decisions while maintaining a steady stream of interaction on a certain topic. It's creating problems in the moment to be solved when the students leave the room.
Here's an example of this problem-making/problem-solving cycle. While grading papers, I realize that my students have serious issues with certain homophones. I decide to do a quick warm-up with homophones the next morning.
They ask if they should take notes.
I say, "Yeah... if you want to make sense in your writing." Oh no, here it comes...
"Will there be a test?" they ask.
I pause. Here's what's happening in my brain: Well, crap. Then I have to make a test, don't I? And do a review beforehand? Or maybe I assess them in some other way. One more column in their writing rubrics? Or maybe they make posters. There is literally no more room for posters on my walls. Or maybe I need to think of some new means of assessing that I've never thought of before. Time to research. Why didn't I think of assessment before I thought of this activity? Oh, right. Because I was grading their papers. Does every, little tiny minutia have to have a grade? Why isn't knowing the right thing enough of a gift? Why the grades why all the grades forever?
Here is what comes out. "I will tell you tomorrow how you'll be graded. But today, take notes."
The more you think ahead of time, the less stressful that moment has to be. But I can't plan ahead all the time. When? If I'm in a heavy grading cycle, then anything the students get to learn in class while I am spending evenings grading essays is a freebie. Learn it or don't. I can't grade everything.
That is problematic in my current setting, though, because if things aren't attached to a grade, students very often feel that they do not need to be attentive or even civil in class.
So what's the solution? What do you do when you can't grade everything?
Here's what I do: I lie about it.
Okay, it's not exactly a lie. It might be on the test. But it might not be. I might grade it after I collect it. But I just as easily might get to the end of the quarter and throw it away.
This week, my trash can was *full* of stacks of ungraded papers every afternoon.
