I am a first year 10th grade English Teacher. Please provide advice for time management!?

Question

I am taking a lot of work home. My biggest concern is having MY OWN LIFE! I don't want my entire life to evolve around my job. I love my job, but the paperwork is unbelievable! Any advice on what sort of assignments or assessments I could give which are much easier/quicker to grade? Or ANY advice at all concerning preparation and planning?

Answer 1

One suggestion is to use recordings of stories or plays (especially useful during the Shakespeare unit) in class.  While students are listening, you can get some grading done.  Try to alternate assignments that require grading with activities that students do at their desks.

Another suggestion is to identify specific criteria you will use when grading written work.  I used to use a 10-point system for grading paragraphs.  E.g., 2 points for topic sentence, 4 points for evidence, 1 points for creativity, 3 points for spelling and grammar.  The criteria and points varied based on the assignment.  I made copies of slips with the criteria on them, stapled them to the student papers, and then I indicated the points.  I also marked up the papers where needed, but the point system kept me from having to write out long explanations.  This made it easier and faster for me to get through the grading, and hopefully it was also more instructive and objective for the students.  

Where you have objective tests (e.g., multiple choice, true/false), you can have the students grade each other's papers.  This only works where you have pretty good students, and even then some spot checking on your part is probably required.  

Any way to hire a grader?  An older high school or college kid who can pitch in one or two nights a week?

Answer 2

There's a cool website called YAKiToMe! http://www.yakitome.com that I found on Jane's e-Learning website "Pick of the Week".

YAKiToMe! turns any electronic text into a podcast you can download to your iPod (or equivalent). It converts PDF, MS Word, txt files, etc. into mp3 files. It has excellentvoices that read in different accents and different languages. You can control the reading speed and pronunciation. It's really quite useful.

I know of teachers that use it in the classroom to read scanned documents aloud to students who are not native English speakers. I use it myself to catch up on reading for work while I commute.

Good luck!

Answer 3

I've seen two crowds:

--the crowd who finishes all the paperwork / planning at school - regardless of the amount, then leave, (always kinda late most days), and don't touch / think / do anything regarding school after they leave.  They may come in a wee bit early to finalize loose ends / xeroxing.

--the crowd who does one or two things at the end of the day, then takes this out of control stack of papers home, only to talk about how they were grading papers during their favorite show, or had to skip an invite out that evening.

The first crowd always seems more organized during the day and is prepared.

The second crowd seems a bit more disheveled, gives more "heart" to the job, but usually has the admin on their backs a bit more.

I've seen teachers make the kids track a lot of their own work, while you're at your computer rattling off their names and they say how many the missed for example, but you're transferring it directly  what they say into a electronic grade book; that's at least a few steps down.

I've seen fancy PDA's assigned to each staff member, where they walk around the room and enter the data in to the device, which is later linked to a computer for graphing / data / etc.

Sadly, I think most of it has to come through "doing". Then you can streamline through trial and error.  It's like a medical practice - you're constantly learning from the past: on a minute to minute basis for things like classroom management, and year to year for things like planning how much of the curriculum you will get through related to a time line.

Don't forget - although it will try suck the soul from you - it is a job, so keep that in mind re:  your mental state.  If YOU burn yourself out you will not be as effective with the kids.  It's a lose, lose that way.

If they're 10th graders, you can even have charts in the classroom where  they are charting their progress and you're just tossing them through a quick line for your observation.