But, I do enjoy grading. When I was teaching Pre-Calculus recitation the last two semesters, I had to grade all of the weekly quizzes, and do a first-pass at grading the exams (the lecturer did the official grading of exams to keep it consistent since different students had different recitation instructors). I enjoy seeing the progress of individual students, and the class as a group. It is great for me to witness their mathematical growth as it is happening. I like being able to tell where pretty much all of my students seem to be clear about what is happening, and where I need to either do a better job, or spend more time, or make adjustments, or whatever. I enjoy writing comments about where things went wrong, or where I’m particularly impressed with their work. I know when I was an undergrad, comments like that on my work really made me feel great. I liked knowing that the professor was paying attention to what I was doing and noticed when I was doing well or when I needed help. And I think at a large state university, that feeling is even more important for individual students.

Anyway, that was last school year. For the summer session, I am the paid homework grader for an undergraduate differential equations class that someone else is teaching. I don’t know any of the students. I don’t ever see them or have to interact with them, except through what I anonymously write in red ink on their homework papers. The anonymity was a struggle at first. I perceived that I was bolder in what I wrote since the students didn’t know me and wouldn’t take offense or at least wouldn’t direct any negative feelings toward me if I was harsh on their homework. But, I think in reality I am nicer because (1) I don’t know if they’re hearing something different in the classroom and I don’t want to penalize them for something their professor is telling them to do and (2) if the students are going to bitch, they aren’t going to complain to me – they’re going to complain to their teacher – and I don’t want to cause the professor any grief because of complaints about homework grades.

I think the weirdest thing to me about grading for someone else, though, is that I can’t see where the mistakes are being made and make adjustments in my teaching, because I’m not the one teaching. I see the same mistakes assignment after assignment after assignment because I can’t communicate the bad pattern to the students. With my own students, if I saw common errors on the quiz, I pointed them out and showed them the correct way to do it when I handed them back so that they wouldn’t make the mistake again. I don’t have that control in this scenario and it is weird for me. Not that I think their professor is doing a bad job – I actually think he’s awesome. I just think that there is a deficiency in prerequisite material that the students don’t even realize they have. And I’ve seen that ALL too much in the small amount of time I’ve been teaching – students don’t retain mathematical information that they should have already learned but did not fully absorb. It’s really frustrating, but you’ve just gotta work from where they are and get them where they need to be. It’s hard work! (For the educator, as well as the student…)