let me get the ball rolling and tell you about grading papers

               When I was little, I used to play “school” with my babysitters.  I would make them sit on the couch as I strutted around the room, calling out spelling words and explaining new vocabulary in a prestigious, egotistical sort of way.  I would get angry and embarrassed when the babysitter would laugh at me or pretend like she knew more than I did.  I was the teacher, after all.

                Grading papers was the best.  I would collect the spelling test, or the pop quiz, or the essay, and mark all over the paper until it bled with red ink.  I loved making comments the most.  “Great job!”  “Amazing!!! J”  “Nice work!”  I don’t know why, but it somehow made me feel important.  I felt that I could really influence my student by what I wrote on her paper. 

                Now that I really am a teacher, things haven’t changed much.

                I will openly admit that I LOVE to grade papers, namely compositions.  Especially now that my students speak English as a second language.  They try to use fancy idioms and proverbs in their writing that usually don’t fit in with what they are trying to say.

                Last week, my 7^th graders wrote a composition about what they want to be when they grow up.  Most of their introductions began something like this:

•           “Let me get the ball rolling by telling you what I want to be when I grow up.”
•          “Let me take this moment to break the ice and tell you about what I want to be when I grow up.”
•          “In black and white, when I grow up I want to be a nurse.”
•      “I’ll blaze a trail by telling you about what I want to be when I grow up.”

The rest of the paragraphs were mostly jumbled and confusing.  All of the “nurses” said something along the lines of wanting to be a nurse to “wash her clothes” or to “give them medicine and injections”.  When I asked them if nurses in Lesotho wash their patients’ clothes, they laughed and walked away embarrassed.  I still don’t know whose clothes they were interested in washing.

I was impressed with some other students’ writing abilities.  One of my best students explained that she wanted to work for the Ministry of Education as a researcher in impoverished areas of the country.  As an orphan herself, she said that she wanted to bring school supplies and provide scholarships to orphans in rural areas who would otherwise be forgotten. 

For the better part of last week, we worked on perfecting our compositions about what we want to be when we grow up.  To my dissatisfaction, I used less and less red ink on their papers as the week went on.  Instead, I drew smiley faces and stars and “Well done!!!”s all over the page.  As I graded, I even exclaimed “WOW!!!!!!” out loud to the class.  They all simultaneously would look up from their desks and smile, only to bend down again and scribble away furiously on their papers.  By Friday, the students were thrilled with their final drafts.  I even read some of the better compositions out loud to the class, to the mixed embarrassment and pleasure of the authors. 

Their usual class teacher was absent for most of the week because her child was ill, so they were anxious to present to her what they had written. 

This week I’m on the rotation again, working at a different school.  Mahloenyeng 7^th graders learned a fun one this week: what sounds do animals make?  You can only imagine me in a classroom full of 13- and 14-year olds purring, roaring, and whinnying.  I’ll tell you, no two days in Lesotho are ever the same.