They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, and in this case, that’s a conservative estimate. This is what three writing classes’ worth of end-term grading looks like, minus a few latecomers, lollygaggers, and incompletes.
The left and middle piles are from my first-year Thinking & Writing classes. Those folders contain the final version of each student’s 15- to 20-page research project, all the rough drafts that went into said project, and a final reflective essay. The small pile on the right is from my intermediate-level Expository Writing class. That stack is smaller because students submitted only final drafts of a 10-page research project, a handful of short essays, and a final reflective essay.
Grading portfolios isn’t as bad as all my complaining would suggest: it just takes a lot of time. As Jo(e) has said about watching student presentations, you learn a lot when you read research projects on topics that students are genuinely interested in, and grading papers is infinitely easier than comment on drafts. When you comment on drafts, you’re still steering the car, trying to communicate to students how they can/should improve a particular piece of writing. When you grade a portfolio, you’re riding in the car. The student is presenting their best shot at the Perfect Project, and you as teacher get to watch like a director in the audience of a one night performance. Yes, you see the mistakes; yes, you make note of them. But any improvements will wait until the next play or project: as in baseball, there’s always next year. For now, you sit back, watch the show, clap when the performance is good, and wring your hands when any given actor plays a scene differently from how you had directed it.
Ultimately, you see, it’s their show, not mine. Those portfolios on my desk? I’m just borrowing them.
Click here for last spring’s markedly different visual depiction of “Piled Higher & Deeper.” And if you want to learn even more about what I do with my first-year Thinking & Writing students, click here to read an alumni magazine article about Keene State’s new Integrated Studies program, illustrated with a picture of Yours Truly conferencing with one of last year’s first-year students. Enjoy!
Hoarded Ordinaries 
Dec 13, 2007 at 9:46 am
That is a horrible pile of amateur prose you have there. Does it affect your regular reading habits: when you get home the LAST thing you want to see are more printed words. Or perhaps you seek out quality, literary prose to counterbalance the stuff you’ve been plowing through most of the day…
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Dec 13, 2007 at 10:33 am
Wow. That’s an amazing amount of tree right there.
But still… look at the pretty colours! 🙂
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Dec 13, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Color me crazy, but I suspect the boxes of crayons and markers are for break time, when your brain is brimming with words and stuffed with sentences?
Enjoy the car ride as best you can. Hopefully you won’t need the H.S. Handles much!
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Dec 13, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Unfortunately, Cliff, during an overloaded semester such as this one, I don’t really have time or energy for a regular reading habit. But yes…when the papers are done, I usually need some time “off” from words before I can read for fun again. Although this semester I’ve been re-reading some old favorites for a lit class I’m teaching, and that has felt right.
And yes, Ivy, there are lots of pretty colors, and lots of dead trees. If students don’t retrieve their portfolios, the papers go into a confidential bin where they’re shredded & then recycled. I also try to re-use the folders of un-claimed portfolios so there’s less waste.
And runningfornow, the dry erase markers are for one of my classrooms, where there are whiteboards instead of blackboards. The colored pencils are for my “Art of Natural History” students, who keep nature journals that we sometimes use in class. If you’re going to sketch autumn leaves in New England, you really need colored pencils to capture the nuances.
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Dec 13, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Your profession, and what you had to do to get there, are admirable. Bravo.
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Dec 13, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Oh my…. You have my admiration!
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