things i hate about teaching, part 1

I love my job, don't get me wrong. I love learning new things, I love teaching, I love interacting with the kids. But there are things I hate about teaching. And in no particular order, here they are.

1. I hate grading papers. Essays, actually. Give me a multiple choice quiz and I'm happy, but essays, ugh, torture. The problem lies in this: they suck. They suck big time. Like big time suckage. These kids can't write, and yeah, I suppose it's my job to each them how to write, but how do you take a kid who is such a sucktastic writer, and teach them to be a great one? I don't consider myself a great writer, but somewhere along the way, I learned to be better than I was in high school. I don't see much hope for these kids. It's painful to read their writing. I've recently adopted the practice of using a rubric. I'm hoping this will make my life infinitely easier/less torturesome. I do have a few coping strategies for grading essays: 1) I read through a few essays before actually grading them. This helps me to realize that they ALL suck, otherwise, I'm usually pretty harsh on the first three or four. 2) I grade the biggest class first. There is some satisfaction in knowing that the biggest class is done. 3) I reward myself. After ever x number of papers I grade, I can have a sweet treat, or a diet coke, or something, anything to keep me motivated. 4) I grade them around friends. I'll often read them to those around me, and we laugh at the ridiculousness together. Lucky for me, I have 2 stacks of papers to grade this weekend. Ugh.
2. I hate kids asking for missing work. This may seem strange, but I hate it. Because frankly, I sometimes don't remember what we did yesterday, never mind three days ago when you were first absent. Rarely does the work then get turned back in to me, so all of my work getting crap together is for naught. And a student can't ever ask at an appropriate time for their missing work. It always has to be in the middle of class. I suppose if I would keep my class website up-to-date, this would be a non-issue, but I can't seem to do that.

While I do really love teaching, I sometimes find myself thinking about other jobs in education, but not as a teacher. My masters is on the not-so-distant future, and it's just a matter of figuring out what I want to do. And, you know, how I'm going to pay for it.