Retrieve batch of marking from the Hub. Harass Hub staff over pieces of marking that are inexplicably missing from the batch. Read the marking rubric. Read the essays and order them according to quality. Read the marking rubric again. Read the essays again, giving them comments in pencil, and decide on a ballpark grade. Read the marking rubric again. Harass Hub staff again over pieces that are still inexplicably missing. Read the essays again and type up summary comments, even though you know half your students won't read them. Read the marking rubric again. Start from the beginning because you have to integrate the newly-found missing pieces into the batch. Read all the essays again, and give them all number grades. Then read all the essays one more time and adjust the number grades relative to each other so as to be consistent across the batch. Then give the batch to the course convener, who will read all the essays and tell you why your marks are wrong.
My family insists that no one else is putting in this much effort. Everyone else insists this is the only way to do it.
I've only just given the Text essays to the convener, which means that I've only just had the chance to face my batch of assessed submissions for Creative Writing. Given the aforementioned process, you can probably guess how I felt pulling the first piece out of the envelope.
So I want to tell the world: grading my writing students' work is like eating cake with both hands. It's like stepping into the ocean on a hot day. I keep forgetting that I'm not just reading fiction for the sake of reading fiction, and that I need to be writing comments as I go. Their work stuns me.
So this is what teaching can be like.
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