by Kamilah
Cummings
As much as I enjoy teaching writing, I must confess that
there are times when I loathe giving written feedback to my students. This is not to say that I do not enjoy the
concept of feedback. Despite spending the last two decades as a professional
editor and writing teacher, I still feel a sense of satisfaction when I assist
a writer in transforming his thoughts from a rough first draft to a polished final
product. However, the journey from draft to final can often be time consuming,
particularly when it comes to feedback. Last
quarter I realized just how time consuming it can be.
In researching the average times teachers spend per paper on
written feedback, I could not find much beyond “a lot” or “too much.” However, I
did see 10 minutes offered as the maximum time a college professor could likely
afford to spend per paper in a term (Jacobs and Hyman). I must say that I have never spent 10 minutes
grading an essay. A girl can dream, but in reality I usually aim for 20 minutes
per paper. After speaking with some of my writing colleagues, I learned that 20
minutes is their feedback holy grail as well.
Last quarter I put my 20-minute average to the test when I taught
two classes with a combined total of 32 actively engaged students. By actively
engaged I mean students attended classes and submitted required assignments. In
both classes students were required to submit a weekly writing assignment. One class
was a writing course where the weekly assignment was a three-four page essay. Depending
on the week, student essays were either at the first draft or revision stage of
the writing process. In the other class,
students submitted a one-two page writing assignment. Although it was less
demanding than the essays in the other class, it still required written feedback.
As always, I set about
providing written feedback for my classes with tried-and-true strategies in
tow. Gottschalk and Hjortshoj suggest that teachers “give reading essays
priority over grading them” (58). Although this is
probably the most time consuming aspect of providing feedback, it is essential
to helping students learn to effectively communicate their ideas. So, I allow
myself time to read every writing assignment my students submit. Additionally,
research dictates that a less-is-more approach to feedback is far more
beneficial to students. Therefore, to assist student learning, I focus my feedback
on key issues rather than correcting errors. I also try to limit my number of
substantive feedback comments to five because limiting comments helps ensure
that students will understand and use the feedback (Gottschalk and Hjortshoj 48). My comments align with the stage of
the writing project. For example, comments on first drafts focus on global revision
while comments on subsequent drafts focus on local revision.
Best practices suggest that teachers provide written
feedback within seven days of receipt. I set aside two days a week for giving
feedback - one day per course to meet this timeframe. However, I soon found
that I needed two days per class for grading. I never completed a set of papers
in one day. Of course, I answered emails and tended to some administrative
responsibilities during those days, but I was still at a loss for why I could
never make it through one class on my “grading” days.
One afternoon, after seemingly making no progress despite
having spent the last three hours giving feedback, I was compelled to click on
my desktop calculator to calculate how much time I dedicated to providing
feedback each week. I calculated 34 papers per week at an average of 15 minutes
per paper. I allotted 20 minutes per paper for the writing class and 10 minutes
per paper for the other one. My results - 510 minutes or 8.5 hours per week. My
results suggested that I should be able to complete my grading in two days. I was perplexed.
To test my findings, I set the stopwatch on my phone to time
my feedback. To my dismay, I found that I spent 33 minutes on the first paper
that I assessed. I chalked that up to the paper. Considering it an anomaly, I
reset the stopwatch and moved on to the next paper – 27 minutes. Another reset
– 29 minutes; so much for my imagined 20-minute-per-paper limit. No wonder it
felt like I wasn’t making a dent in my grading. I wasn’t. At an average of 29
minutes per paper, I was actually spending 986 minutes or 16.4 hours per week
grading.
Feeling a bit dazed and dejected by these numbers, I
realized that I needed a strategy to keep myself on track when providing
feedback. I decided to switch from using my phone’s stopwatch to the timer. I
set the timer at 20 minutes and continued providing feedback. I was still
providing feedback when the timer sounded. This happened again and again. Each
time it occurred, I continued. The faint digitized ringing was easy to ignore.
However, the hours that passed were not. I knew that I could not survive the
quarter grading at this rate.
So, I went out and bought myself an old-fashioned, no frills
cooking timer. It had a big dial that I had to manually reset for each paper.
Its loud, jarring buzzer was just what I needed. It could not be ignored or
drowned out by whatever random Prince song I listened to while grading. Initially,
I found the incessant ticking of the timer exceedingly annoying. I actually considered
abandoning my strategy because of it. However, I noticed that the ticking rate
increased during the last five minutes of my set time. In the beginning my
heart would skip a beat when the ticking rate increased, and anxiety would set
in. However, after some time, I found that I was actually getting better at
managing my time. This turned out to be a great checkpoint tool. The
five-minute mark became a measure for where I should be in the paper at that
point. After a few weeks of using the timer, I had significantly cut back on
the amount of time that I exceeded the 20-minute timer. I even started to play
games with the timer to improve my efficiency.
My loud, white cooking timer revealed that I was not
maximizing my feedback strategies. Although, I had prioritized reading over
grading, limited and focused my comments, I was taking too long to do these
things. I was reading and re-rereading the papers when I was confused instead
of simply commenting on the lack of clarity and moving on. I was also
overthinking the comments that I wrote or simply writing too much. This was quite the revelation, and I put it
to good use. By the end of the quarter, I was completing some papers in less
than 20 minutes. Numerous voices hail the benefits of timed writing to improve
writing. Therefore, the benefit of timed feedback should have come as no
surprise to me. I only regret taking so much time to realize it.
Works Cited
Gottschalk, Katherine and Keith Hjortshoj. The
Elements of Teaching Writing. Boston: Bedford /St. Martin's, 2004. Book.
Jacobs, Lynn F and Jeremy S Hyman. 10 Things You
Didn't Know About College Grading. 4 November 2009. Article. 6 July 2016.
<http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2009/11/04/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-college-grading>.
