How to host a grading party... in 2021
How to host a grading party
This is the last week of the fall semester at Wheaton College. Normally, at some point in the week, I'd be hosting a six-hour, Christmas-themed grading party. Most years, between two and three dozen colleagues stop in, open-house style, between 9:00 and 3:00, spend some time reconnecting and get some grading done. For some, it has become part of what one colleague calls our "academic-liturgical calendar." Or you might call it our "shadow academic calendar" of regular academic-social events.
(It is worth noting that the category of "academic-social" is not necessarily intuitive. For example, my son, Ben, doesn't get it. Ben: “Dad, why do you and your friends have a grading party?” Me: “Because it’s better than grading without a party. Don’t you think?” Ben: “Um, I mean, why don’t you have a normal party?”)
When one colleague texted to say this event was what he missed the most this fall (#thanks2020), I thought it might be good to share how we put this on, in case others want to give it a try.
- We invite more people than we can fit in the house. (NB: If you invite colleagues who are on sabbatical and not grading that semester, they may show up just to taunt the group.)
- While we have a quiet grading space for those colleagues serious about making progress, we also set aside one space for Christmas music and "conversational grading" (almost always more conversation than grading) and have a couple "in-between" spaces.
- Beverage service is very important: We serve coffee in the morning, hot buttered rum in the afternoon, and tea all day.
- We invite colleagues to bring baked goods, donuts, or some other delectable for the whole group, if they'd like, and we order pizza for lunch.
- We also put out the "Challenge Bowl," filled with movie quotes. Merry graders may blindly pull a quote from the bowl, the challenge being to integrate said quote into feedback on student papers, projects, and exams. Anyone who successfully completes at least one challenge does not need to contribute to the pizza fund, and we track, year-to-year, the Challenge Bowl Champion, the colleague who integrates the most quotes into their comments in a given year. (I can neither confirm nor deny that some senior administrators, having heard of this challenge, have sent in movie quotes for the bowl.)
- Some years, we give the party a name. (Yes, we used, "Make America Grade Again.")
If you feel inspired, join the movement next December and make 2021 the year of the grading party.
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- The holidays will be a social media "quiet time" for me and a break from these newsletters, which will start up again in January. In the meantime, enjoy these playlists of "Little Drummer Boy" and "O Holy Night."