Making A Mark

Spent a fair amount of the day ploughing through various essays with the old red pen in my hand and, curiously, unbelievably, almost enjoyed the experience. I've always seen marking as important but in recent years I've come to regard it as moving to the centre of my teaching. I try to regard each piece as almost a cry from the writer's soul, worthy of my full attention. 'Try' is the operative word here, though; all too often the attempt ends in failure. Mind you, that's tied to the sad fact that the cry from the soul bit is generally just a useful fiction.

I also find it strangely useful to break off marking in the middle of an essay, do something else for a minute or two, and then get back to it. I started doing this because of problems with my back, seeking to ensure I didn't hold the same position too long, but I've come to find it psychologically refreshing. Usually it means I have to reread the bit I've already done but it helps me see the whole thing with fresh eyes somehow.

When I first started teaching one of the problems I found marking students' work was the pretty startling evidence of how often I'd failed to convey clearly what they needed to know. Now I've come to take that for granted such that when someone gets it right it's enormously refreshing. I can't think of that many jobs that have failure as a kind of built-in component. Banking, maybe?