I am fresh off of a week of Spring Break, and boy, I feel better.  The days leading up to a break are excruciating for all – students are all like “why do we have to do any work? It’s almost Spring Break!” and teachers are all like “We can’t just sit around and chat for a week – there’s still Stuff to Learn!”  But inside, teachers are saying the same thing as the students.  Don’t let them fool you.

In this particular case, that blasé attitude is complicated by the fact that 3^rd quarter grades are due the day after we return to school.  I cannot possible type a representation of a heavy enough sigh.  Grades are always the bane of my existence.  I enjoy and am quite good at planning a curriculum of learning, constantly pulling in and trying creative ways to keep kids engaged in the task at hand.  But the grind of grading all of the paper that is produced from engaging learning?  Ugh.  The worst.

Simple math problem for you:  Juli has 196 students.  If Juli gives all of her students an assignment, which they all turn in, and Juli only spends five minutes grading each assignment, how long does Juli spend grading that ONE ASSIGNMENT?  That’s right, kids:  980 minutes of grading (aka 16.33 hours).  Papers, of course, take more time to grade, but let’s just keep the five minutes as a handy guide.

Where is Juli supposed to find that 16+ hours for each assignment? Keep in mind, there is at least one grade-able assignment per class meeting (sometimes two, if it’s an easily completed task).  Juli has a little bit of a life, plus Juli is old enough to know that if she burns herself out by grading night and day, she will not sign that continuing contract offered by the school district in April or May of each year.  She will foolishly give up this job that she is reasonably good at, where she makes a major difference in at least one student’s life per year, simply because she no longer has the energy to care.

(now, back to first person) You see my dilemma?  Students aren’t going to do the work if they don’t think it will affect their grade.  Students aren’t really in it for the learning, although it would be swell if they were.  So the threat of a grade must be out there!  But I can’t possibly keep up! So I triage a lot, grading critical assignments, but even that is impossible to complete at an up-to-date rate.  Sometimes a student gets lucky and blows off the assignment I didn’t grade.  Sometimes, I get so far behind in grading that it takes a case box (the box that a case of paper comes in) to hold all seven classes’ worth of “to be graded.”  That “may” be the current state I am facing.

And before you go all "Just use scan trons!  Multiple choice tests are easier to grade!" on me, keep in mind that MC tests do not show the necessary level of understanding.  MC tests are good at the ground floor of learning -- plot summary and character traits and the like -- but not so good at critical thinking and application.  So I don't do hardly any MC anything, including practice sheets.

My Spring Break was spent chasing three of my darling grandchildren while their parents were at a conference.  It was perfect – they are perfect – and I regret nothing.  Except for the grading. 

So, while I procrastinate grading for just a while longer, let’s briefly discuss the agrarian-based public school schedule.

Why do we start school in August and end it by Memorial Day?  (don’t quibble with me here – I know some schools start after Labor Day and end in June, but the basic framework is the same, and the schools I have taught at and my children went to have been on the August-May schedule).  It’s because back-in-the-day, families needed everyone to help with farming tasks in the summer months, and no one was needed during the winter months, so they just worked the school calendar out so that the farmers could get their help (i.e. their children) when the labor was most intensive.

I have taught in areas where some children were still key cogs in the family-farm engine.  Those kids were working early and late even during school sessions, especially in September/October harvest season and March/April calving & planting season.  Sometimes parents would pull them from school for a couple of days (or a week) if things were really hopping.  This wasn’t very conducive to learning, but it happened and we made the best of it.

But to be honest, even in those areas the number of affected students was far less than 10% of the total student body.  Probably closer to 5% of the junior high and high school student body were involved in agrarian work, and that includes the kids whose families didn’t own the farm but whose fathers were employed there.  In Idaho, school was dismissed for 10 days right around the time of the potato harvest in late September or early October, with the reasoning that some of the other students (those not directly involved in farming year-round) would be able to get jobs during the harvest, and that money was vital to them/their family, so it made sense to cancel school so they could have that opportunity.  That was a unique feature of southeastern Idaho, but it happens in other parts of the country, too.

My point is that the whole school calendar has been set and arranged to make life easier for less than ten percent of the students (in rural areas) and almost zero percent of the students (in urban areas).  Families are accustomed to planning vacations during the summer; whole industries are devoted to “Summer” as a concept.  But there is no good academic reason to stop schooling students for almost three months.  There are multiple studies documenting the loss of dexterity in reading and arithmetic due to the break in schooling.

If we had school year round, with reasonable breaks scattered throughout, our educational system would suddenly become more successful as a result of eliminating those brain-sucking summer months.  True, it would cost more – teacher’s salaries would have to be adjusted, buildings and bus drivers and the accompanying utilities would be constantly in use – but wouldn’t year round school make more sense?  Families could adjust.  Year round school is a thing in many places throughout the United States, with identifiable advances in learning.

Year round school would not solve my grading problem.  But it might be worth it for the educational advances for students.