Summer, summer, summertime!

One thing is certain, I think I was meant to be a teacher.  Ever since I had any concept of "what I wanted to be when I grew up" I wanted to be a teacher.   I would go with my mom willingly during the summer when she would work at school.  The main purpose was so I could write on the chalkboard.  I'd get upset if there wasn't any chalk available!  (The irony is that now, as a teacher, I HATE using the chalkboard..I'd love to have a dry erase board in my room rather than a chalkboard.)

As I was thinking about my summer break, I realized that teaching is truly an ideal profession in many ways.  It's not without its frustrations and irritations, but it really is ideal.

The main reason, for me, is that I can't think of any other profession in which you can start completely over every year.  In the upcoming school year, I will be teaching courses I have taught before.  But the thing is, not only do I get an entirely new crop of students to work with, I also can revamp and redo what didn't work the last time I taught the course.  I have wracked my brain and I can't think of another profession that allows that "redo" option every single year.  I can go back to the unit plans I made for novels, plays, and writing projects and enhance them, basically getting a "second chance" on them.  I can even trash the entire plan and start from scratch!

This year I gave myself this opportunity without even knowing it.  I taught 4 sections of freshmen and sophomores in English.  I had a total of 112 students in these four sections.  English classes mean writing projects.  The major project of second semester was their biographical research paper.  The thought of grading 112 research papers was daunting to say the least.  It also would have been a nearly endless process.   I'll go out on a limb and do some math here.  A "good" paper (one with few errors) may take around 5 minutes to evaluate.  On average, I'd say it takes around 8 minutes to evaluate a research paper effectively.  So...8 minutes per paper multiplied by 112: 896 minutes.  That's 14.9 hours of grading...IF each paper ONLY takes 8 minutes.  Considering that I have to teach from 8-3:15 5 days a week, plan my lessons, do personal errands and tasks, and find personal time AND sleep, I probably would get through those papers in 4 weeks, if I'm super efficient and don't do anything else.

Have I mentioned that I hate grading papers and I procrastinate grading?  The reality is that I'd take longer than 4 weeks with 112 research papers, not because of how long it takes to grade, but because I would procrastinate.

Well, I decided that I would split those 4 sections and do the research paper with 2 of them and a literature unit with the other 2.  50-ish papers is a lot easier to get through, the pile is a lot less daunting, and I like the planning aspect of teaching better than the grading.  Then, the classes who did the research paper would do the lit unit, and the other would do the research paper.

Little did I know that not only would this be good on the grading end, but also on the planning end.  As I was teaching the research unit to the 2 classes, and then when I started grading their papers, I noticed things that I could have done better...and I had the chance to fix that RIGHT AWAY!   The papers I got from the second group of students were noticeably better than the first set.   (Likewise I was able to make similar changes to the literature unit..I noticed things that the students didn't understand as well and I was able to explain elements differently.)

I decided after this that the remaining writing units I would split in that way.  Not only did it decrease the paper load, but it also enabled me to immediately improve on what I had just taught.

Are there other professions that offer this kind of opportunity?  To start (from scratch if needed) over on a regular basis?