Unpopular Opinion- Teachers Should Have A Deadline For Grading By: Alexandra Forman

Teachers Should Have A Deadline For Grading

By: Alexandra Forman

    As a student I have spent many nights up until 4 a.m. trying to finish an essay that was assigned to me that day, only to find out the grade of it weeks, a month later, or not even at all. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been in this situation or has been frustrated by how long it can take a teacher to grade a paper. I'm also sure many teachers have gotten annoyed or upset with their students for taking too long to hand in an assignment. These are both valid points to be aggravated by, but I do believe a common ground can be found. 

    One thing I want to make clear is that I am in no way diminishing against the hardworking teachers we have. They have lives outside of school, and families and children to take care of at the end of the day. That being said, so do students, and I think some teachers forget that. Often times in class when a student asks their teacher "when will the test be graded?" the teacher responds with "I have other classes, I haven't had time yet". As a student this response gets on my nerves because my peers and I have other classes too. If a teacher asked us why we didn't hand in the homework on time and our response was "I have other classes, I haven't had time to do it yet," this would not be an acceptable or appropriate response. Some students would probably be reprimanded by their teachers for responding in what they view as a disrespectful way. Except, how can this be disrespectful when they use that same "excuse" on us?

    Furthermore, it is very rare to find a teacher that is teaching a class all eight periods. Students on the other hand have a class every period that they get assigned homework in. This is a huge workload especially with sports and work that many students have to go to after school, while still being expected to hand in their assignments on time. Teachers only have to make sure their grades are in by the end of the marking period, this is about two and a half months at a time. I have had multiple teachers that wait until the very end of the marking period to put any grades in. I get that teachers have around 80+ students, so they do deserve more time, but not two and a half months. I think a fair compromise would be that teachers have a week or two to grade an assignment from the day that it was due. For students, it is very important for them to see their current grade in a class. It allows them to see what skills they need to work on, or if they should ask the teachers for extra help if they need to bring their grades up. 

    All in all, teachers and students are both very hard working groups that our apart of our learning community. That being said, it is unfair for students to see their teachers have two and a half months to grade while they only have a few days to complete an essay. There are teachers out there who are great at getting grades in and giving their students a lot of time to complete their assignments, but for those that don't, I believe a change is necessary. A lot of the time a students grade is what motivates them to learn and keep working, and we can encourage this by having teachers be more on top of grading.