Saturday, September 15, 2007
marking
All my various teaching commitments have caught up on me. I currently am marking
: 10 essays about missional church leadership (done)
: 16 masters essays on critical missional issues in relation to emerging church (half done)
: 40 masters pieces of work on living the Biblical text in a postmodern context (half done)
: 60 pieces of work on being kiwi, being christian.
That’s 126 pieces of work. When you consider that the masters related work comes in the 3000 word range, that’s a lot of marking.
Each piece of work represents blood and sweat. There is nothing worse than getting an assignment back with a simple mark scrawled on it. So my personal commitment is to write 5-10 comments, engaging with the blood and sweat. That’s currently a lot of comments.
Best thing about marking is realising that students are making connections and joining dots. Second best thing is when I learn something. Worst thing is a student who has put the work in, but hasn’t answered the question (haven’t come across this in relation to the above – yet!).
)
… Indeed Steve, it seems you are a ‘marked’ man in many ways.
I’m astounded at people like you who can multi task so well and stay on top of it all – running Church(es)..{I mean that in the sense that you have various congregations in your parish}, emergent stuff, speaking at various places around the country and world, taking care of your marriage and family….And all this done on a vegetarian diet – astounding indeed. God speed you in your tasks.
Comment by Tangira — September 16, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
vegetarian …aye good dig.
some days i think there is a richness in the mix. other days i simply think my juggling lots of things means i just do lots of things badly.
off to make a salad 🙂
steve
Comment by steve — September 16, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
Seeing i am one who has my mark back already this isn’t sucking up … the comments are really helpful thank you for your dedication. I so know how you feel with three jobs and the juggling gets worse for the next couple of weeks. What is it that makes us want to offer fulltime perfection to part time roles?
Comment by Jo wall — September 18, 2007 @ 6:20 pm
3000! I’m sooooo doing the wrong masters programme.
Comment by Sharyn — September 18, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
Hi Sharyn.
Just to clarify, I am marking for
One: a US masters paper, which is more like a 2nd degree in NZ.
Two: a Kiwi masters paper, in a class which is teaching a new set of skills (how to read living theology). So the workload totals 10,000 words, but I designed the assessment in 3 steps of 3-4000 words each, so that if students got step 1 or 2 wrong, they would get feedback from me before attempting step 3.
steve
Comment by steve@emergentkiwi.org.nz — September 19, 2007 @ 10:29 am
thanks jo. really appreciate the feedback.
i hope i’ve made the perfect response, so that i can now rush back to my next perfectionist task 🙂
steve
Comment by steve@emergentkiwi.org.nz — September 19, 2007 @ 10:51 am
I guess that’s fairly similar, although my 10%ers are around 2-3000 and my 35%ers are more like 5-6000.
I didn’t know the US masters was so different. Crazy Americans.
Comment by Sharyn — September 19, 2007 @ 6:22 pm