The most difficult task in teaching?

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My toughest challenge in teaching? This is easy to answer. It’s handing back student work.

The power of assessments or exams is that it raises the stakes for students. It makes things count, in a really visible way. They know that these numbers will go somewhere: a report card, an email home, a university admission score.

But in giving back student work two things often happen.

One, students are focused on the mark and that’s about it. Now I’m not blaming them. The focus of assessments can seem to be about marks and ranks and how you did against your peers.

As teachers, we know that students are at their most attentive just before marked work is handed back. They’re poised on the edges of chairs. So we try to take advantage of it.

  • We talk about how this work is part of a process and how students should use this as an opportunity to identify and address their weaknesses.

  • We encourage students to ignore the marks for a minute and focus on the comments.

  • We plead with students to think about how well they actually engaged with the questions.

Some students just want their marks. And not much else. But as I said, I don’t really blame them. They’ve got used to a process and don’t expect much else.

Two, we don’t give returning the work the time it actually requires. If we want the feedback to mean something, giving the papers back in a group setting doesn’t set up the ideal environment for reflection.

If I need to give the work back and I’ve got a 50-ish minute period then that leaves very little time for individual feedback and discussion.

I’ve tried a number of different ways to give back work in more meaningful ways. My current strategy, for the senior students (Year 11 and 12), is to give back work individually. Or at least part of the task individually. For example, I might give the students their multiple choice and short answers back as a group (without their overall mark). But then I’ll bring students up individually to discuss their essays and given them their overall marks (but not ranks and that’s a topic for another day).

This is not an easy strategy and requires a double period to at least hope to get through all the individual discussions. It’s also hella draining.

It’s all a work in progress but I find this task so challenging. Check out my video on the process below.