Just a note:

My semester grades are in! The whole weeked without a single paper to grade...no, not a single one!!!!!

Can you who are not English teachers imagine what it is not to have a single folder of twenty + essays to grade over the weekend? This is the first weekend since school started in September that I have had completely free, including Thanksgiving and winter breaks. The way our semester grades came due on Friday was a bit of a miracle because usually we've pretty much begun the new term--but not this time!!!

What a great sense of freedom to look at this weekend and its possibilities. Even during the recent ice storm I had two folders of compositions that I plowed through, hoping to find slants of light.

It takes approximately four hours, sometimes more, sometimes less, to grade a set of compositions. This doesn't include coffee/tea/sometimes stronger spirits to get the objective, fair voice inside to wake up. Sometimes the work is too boring because the topic didn't work--and the students were unsure of how to crack the nut open.

Additionally, there are so many building lessons to work up to a correction area point to be included in oncoming essays, and those building lessons include:

drills
exercises
quizzes
tests

...all to be graded...and that doesn't include vocabulary and spelling tests. I'm probably the only high school teacher I know who still gives spelling tests, but because my students misspell basic words such as whenever, wherever and probably, they do benefit from basic review. Also, spelling tests are easy and they help boost the students' averages a little. I don't count such tests very much, but every point helps.

Anyway, I just want you all to know that it is a glorious thing not to have a single paper in any shape or form to grade this weekend. Five months nightly grading and weekend labor have come to a halt.

So I shall spend my weekend...reading and learning 'el' words.

Pardon this outburst of enthusiasm. I hope it has been a little educational about English educators.