English with Mrs. Lamp

Dear fellow high school English teachers,

Teaching is notoriously time-consuming. ⏳ We’ve all been there. You have 10 stacks of essays to grade 📚, three preps (so three lesson plans to create) 📝, and a real desire to inspire your students with how truly awesome language and literature can be. ✨ But how do we balance our passion for teaching with a realistic approach to what can be a truly overwhelming workload? 😰

I’ve been teaching in a small Midwest school since 2011. 🏫 Eventually, I realized that instead of doing the same things again and again that I KNEW took forever and were breaking my spirit 💔, I needed to stop and take some time to learn about how to reduce my time commitments. 🕒 For a long time, I had stacks of essays and lesson plans to write 📝📄, so I felt like I didn’t have time to try to reflect and research my way out of the hole. But it was something I needed to do, and I’m glad I finally put off some of that work so that I could figure out how to make teaching sustainable long term for me. 🌟

I hope you’ll take the time today to let me share some time-tested, rigorous, and fresh approaches to managing your time and energy better. Even if you DO have a stack of essays guilting you from across the room! 😅📄📄📄

Revolutionize Your Grading Process

Grading doesn’t have to be a weekend-killer. Here are some game-changing strategies:

• Spot Checks: During writing sessions, circulate and provide quick feedback. Offer 2-3 points of praise and one area for improvement. This real-time guidance is more meaningful for the kids and will reduce your final grading time.
• Color-Coded Feedback: For first drafts, use two colors: one for “awesome” and one for “needs work.” Limit yourself to 1-2 comments of each type per page. Focus on significant issues only. When they submit their final draft, have them submit the first one where they’ve checked off the areas you asked them to address. As they revise, be available to help them if they don’t understand what needs to be done or how to fix something. Their final drafts will be easy to breeze through!
• Essay Ambulance: While grading, have a notepad handy to note common issues. I like to then create 1-3 mini-lessons (which I call “Essay Ambulances”) addressing these problems. I then offer students the chance to revise based on these lessons & earn points back.
• Post-it “End Comments”: Instead of marking up a whole paper, summarize your feedback on a post-it note with 2-3 positives and 1 “needs work” item. Turn this into an engaging class activity by having students match comments to anonymized papers. I like to put them in groups of three so it’s not unmanageable (they only have three papers and “end notes” to look over).
• Hall of Fame: Showcase exemplary work in a “Hall of Fame” PowerPoint presentation. This celebrates excellence, provides mentor texts for kids to use when working on future writing projects, and reduces individual grading time in the long-run. I pick 2-3 stellar intros, 2-3 stellar body paragraphs, and 2-3 stellar conclusions. We read them together, discuss what we like about them and why they “work,” and then I email the PowerPoint to every student so they have it to refer to later.
• Completion Points and Spot Checks: For smaller assignments and/or scaffolded parts/steps in a larger assignment, consider using completion points or quick spot checks rather than detailed grading. (I consider a “spot check” to be me glancing over something as they are finished or at the end of a step in a longer process. I check their work, give verbal feedback, or a check/check-plus/check-minus, and mark it down for completion points (whether it was perfect or not).
• Targeted Feedback: Research supports giving less but more focused feedback. Don’t feel obligated to correct every error. I often correct only three GUM (grammar, usage, & mechanics) errors & 1-2 other issues per page. Just focus on what’s most egregious or most in need of work for their paper to move toward proficiency. (I do fill out a more detailed rubric, but this is way quicker because it’s all the issues they may have already typed out, so all I have to do is highlight areas of need and then put a check in the meets/needs/exceeds boxes. Find my rubrics here!)

Streamline Assessments

By embracing well-crafted multiple-choice questions, grading in class, and incorporating collaborative activities, you can streamline your workload AND enhance student engagement!

• Embrace Multiple Choice: Don’t shy away from well-crafted multiple-choice questions. They can assess deep understanding while saving grading time.
• Use Fewer Questions: On assessments, figure out exactly how FEW questions you can use to assess what needs to be assessed. If you want to assess a concept multiple times or from different angles, try including it in one multiple choice and then in one short answer or paragraph response (instead of two different short answers, or worse, two different paragraph or essay responses!).
• Grade in Class: Whenever possible, grade during class time. This allows for faster feedback turnaround time and reduces your after-hours workload. I grade whenever I can steal a moment. Kids are testing? I’m grading. Kids are working and don’t need my help? I’m grading. Kids are watching a video? I’m grading! You can do this too! (Just be sure to look up once in a while, LOL!)
• Do More Presentations: Incorporate more presentations into your curriculum. You grade as they present, taking nothing home.
• Do More Group and Partner Work: Increase collaborative activities. This fosters peer learning and can reduce the number of individual assignments to grade. (I know assessing group work can be tricky, so here are all the things I use to make it fair and transparent for students, and here’s a free write-up on dealing with common group work issues!)
• Stagger Due Dates: Avoid assigning major projects across different preps simultaneously. Spread out your workload. If you teach English 11 and AP® Lit, for example, don’t have big tests or essays for both at the same time. Plan your units out WAY ahead so you can avoid this. (My full-year plans for AP® Lit. and English 11/Am. Lit. are up on TPT!)

Simplify Grading with Rubrics

Rubrics are a game-changer when it comes to saving time on grading. By clearly outlining expectations ahead of time, you know what you are looking for in each student’s work. Rubrics also provide a consistent, transparent grading system that ensures you’re assessing the same criteria every time, speeding up the grading process and reducing the chance of errors or inconsistencies. With rubrics, students also know exactly what they need to do to succeed, which can cut down on time spent answering questions about grades and expectations. Plus, by focusing on key areas (like content, organization, and grammar), you can quickly and easily assess the key aspects of a project or essay without wasting time thinking through how or what you’re grading each time you sit down with your marking pen. So, invest some time upfront in creating clear rubrics, and you’ll save yourself countless hours in the long run! (Grab all of my rubrics here!)

By implementing just a few of these strategies, you won’t only be saving time; you’ll be creating a more effective, enjoyable learning environment. 🌟 Your students will feel empowered, capable, and valued. They’ll receive better, more timely feedback, helping them to produce insightful work that’s a pleasure to read. And you’ll be able to enjoy teaching more (and hopefully even stop finding yourself scrolling for other job openings during your lunch breaks!). 🍎

Most of us have a rockstar, guru, genius teacher in our own K-12 experience whose passion, dedication, and expertise inspired us to want to teach. 🌟 You CAN be like him or her. I promise! By working smarter (not harder), you’ll create space for the creative, dynamic aspects of teaching that drew you to this profession while banishing the anxiety of what once felt like an overwhelming workload! 😄

With these approaches, you’ll find yourself not just surviving but truly thriving. 🌟 You’ll have more time to dive deep into content, spark those magical moments of connection, and yes, even enjoy that spark of fun that makes teaching English so rewarding. 😁🎉

Here’s to being the kind of teacher who’s super prepared, wildly enthusiastic, and still has time for a life outside the classroom. You’ve got this, and your students are lucky to have you. Now go forth and conquer that stack of essays – in half the time!! 📄✍️