A few years ago, I made a personal goal to find a happier balance between work and life. I was constantly feeling overwhelmed. I was mentoring a new teacher and while working with her, I figured out some crucial things that also made me more efficient. I want to share these tips with you, to help you have a little more time to do what makes you happy, beyond teaching those wonderful students!
THEN: I dreaded every Sunday. I always had 5 files folders stuffed with papers to grade. I used to think “Oh, that will go fast because I just have to check that they completed it.”
Practice is practice. Why make it a permanent “grade book” grade? I think of my piano playing days. I wanted to be able to practice, with feedback from my teacher Mrs. Hensley, before I had to “perform” the song for her (aka get a sticker on my music sheet for performing well). She didn’t have to “grade” me every time for me to improve.
NOW: I want their grades to reflect what they can do in the language, not what they completed. So PERFORMANCE, instead of COMPLIANCE. With that in mind, I try* to only grade their unit assessments. (Read “How Many Grades?” for an example of my first attempt at this)
I still give ongoing feedback along the way, but just no grades. (Read “Warm-ups that Work” for an example) Students can self-assess along the way too. That’s a important use of my Stamp Sheets. Students know what they need to master by the time the assessment comes. A good reflection question for them (and you!) is “Did you participate and complete the activities in class and the homework? Did the assignments in class prepare you for this assessment?”
*Some schools have required categories like “Homework/Quizzes/Assessments” so I had to make it work. Which leads to the rubric…
THEN: I spent too much time figuring out how many points things were worth, how much to take off for errors and then weighting it so little assignments were not worth more than big assignments.
NOW: I use a proficiency-based rubric for everything that is graded. I let my grade book categories do the weighting for me.
THEN: I found I wasted a lot of planning time creating activities. I decided it was more important to spend planning time finding relevant resources than typing up worksheets.
NOW: I mainly use “adaptable activities.” Most are *Just add Authentic Resource* ready! HUGE time saver.
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Underline/Circle
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Agree/Disagree w/ Partner
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Inferring
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Rating with Stars
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Categorize Vocab
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Highlight Away- Tweets
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Tweet Opinions
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Categorize vocab and analyze components
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Chat station- teacher or student questions
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Highlight Away- Article
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4 corners
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Write a questions
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Describe a video
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10-3-1
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Compare cultures
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Station- just change video
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Look at AuthRes to make a "recipe"
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Station- Categorize
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Aspects of Culture
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Storyboard for skits
I also struggled with finding past activities quickly, which led to more wasted time. I organize these in folders so I can edit quickly if needed and project on screen to save some printing time too.
THEN: During project and assessment times, I used to spend a lot of time creating rubrics and detailed guidelines of what they needed to include. And I always forgot something!
NOW: I already have the proficiency-based rubric which explains language expectations. Done! Now I have THEM decided what should be included. These are problem-solving skills that they need to do, not me! I do find it’s important that they have seen examples of good ones before I ask them to do it, which happens in the practice.
This includes more than the one example I mentioned here. Can a student do this? Is this a skill they should be able to do? – I found more times than not, the answer is “Yes.” I still believe that I should always model or show them a model, but I don’t need to do all the work.
THEN: I loved my school and I would do just about anything extra. I chaperoned dances, was department chair, participated in professional cohorts, completed National Boards, sponsored after school clubs, went to sporting events, and oh yeah, wrote blog posts daily. All of these are very valuable, but it was TOO MUCH!
NOW: I stick with the ones that I’m passionate about and the ones that improve my classes. Here’s a nice little trick I learned if saying “no” is difficult… If admin or someone asks you to do something extra, say “Sure! But to do it well, I will need someone else to do ____ for me.”
This also includes those “just” tasks your admin or district asks for. Will you “just” turn in… It is “just” one extra… “Just” record… Definitely do what they ask, but limit your time spent on those.
Well there are 5 tips from one teacher to another. It’s all about being efficient. I REALLY hope this helps. Teachers work hard and deserve their play time too! What helps you to save time?
I just have one question. Were you reading my mind? I have been so overwhelmed lately with keeping up with school and home. I so appreciate these ideas and will try these out.
Thank you very much!
I love this! And at a time when my colleagues and I are talking a lot about a shift to standards-based, proficiency-based grading, the timing is perfect!
Great ideas. Thanks for taking the time to do this!
Bless you for sharing how you have navigated the madness that can become the day to day struggle for teachers! I find myself being so overwhelmed with the details you’ve described. This post will help me “weed through” my own files and plans!
Good! It’s worth the sort.
Fantastic post and very timely! You are rock stars!!!!!!! 🙂
This could not have come at a better time! You have the pulse of what we face especially as we hit the days of spring. I truly think this is AS important as teaching creatively for proficiency. You both rock!
So glad to share with you all! Finding this balance was huge for my happiness and I believe it made me a better teacher. What will you do for fun with your extra time?!
Hello! I thankfully found your site at the beginning of the school year and have been implementing some your strategies (little by little!). My district is starting to catch onto the idea of standards-based grading, so I am actually ahead of the curve thanks to you! It is so crucial for FL teaching, where teachers actually have measurable skills to evaluate. I could go on and on about how valuable your materials and insight have been to me this year. I do have to ask, though — what are you class sizes and do you have block scheduling? I feel it is a huge challenge for me to put a lot of these brilliant ideas into practice, given I have classes of over 31 students and only 48 minutes to work with them each day. I also find it’s really difficult to get my 9th graders out of this habit of doing work for the sake of compliance and meaningless grades. Just wondering what the conditions of your school day are like, and if you can offer any insight. Thanks again for all of your amazing work!
Hi Nicole! So glad we could help and sounds like great things are happening (I LOVE standards-based grading btw). I have taught in several different situations- block schedule, hour classes/trimester (12-weeks then don’t see them for 12 weeks) and 30-minute classes daily, large/31 students to small/6 students, private, public and alternative. Megan has ONLY taught large- 31 students- classes. I would say every situation has it’s own challenges, but it has worked for me regardless of the situation. I just have to adapt some aspects and make little tweaks. Honestly, the small classes were actually my most challenging (grading was less, but there was so much more differentiation, activities went quickly and they were very vocal about things they didn’t like). What are your specific challenges?
Regarding the compliance situation, it took time, but I have a story that illustrates this. I had one student that figured out that I didn’t grade class work. She had to pass the class to graduate. She refused to do the assignments because she thought she could do the unit assessments without practicing. I offered some other activities, she still refused, and finally I said fine, just don’t disrupt class. True to her word, she literally did nothing for the next two weeks. When I gave her the unit assessment, she freaked. She talked to me and promised to do every practice assignment after that. She participated, and then she passed the next assessment. That was a huge insight for her, and me too. If she could have done the assessment without practicing, then I was wasting everyone’s time. She was by far my most rebellious student ever, but she did the practice because she knew it would prepare her. From then on, I just make sure I keep explaining *how* the practice will help them on the assessment. The stamp sheets really helped with that too. They can see all the goals and how we are progressing toward a big goal. It keeps me focused on what’s important too.
These tips are GREAT! I am going to get going on using the adaptable activities!
Thanks! Hope it helps!
Thanks Denise. Hope it helps you as much as it helped me!
I agree with you on the point about organizing the material into folders. MY mistake is that I can not organize digital materials on PC. Your article has given me motivation to fix it. Thank you for writing such great material. You are giving value 🙂
I’m curious about the activity you have titled “Look at AuthRes to make a “recipe”” Can you shed more light onto this?
Hi Amanda! I saw this in an English class and fell in love. Basically, if they are going to create something (speech, presentation, review, etc), then they should evaluate real examples first. So I’ll walk through an example: The goal was for students to be able to give their opinion about music. So I thought about where they might see or hear opinions about music… Reviews! Like on iTunes, magazines or websites. They looked at several examples of well written and poorly written reviews. THEY evaluated them and wrote the “recipe” for a good review – the “ingredients” are… the title, artist, genre, lyrics, my specific opinion and why. Next when I asked them to write a review, they already knew what a good review included. This English teacher pointed out that any time I needed to tell them what they needed to include, that they are probably missing the valuable step of deciding that on their own. That hit me. Why was I telling them? I was doing the thinking for them. I hope that explains it!