“We teach to change the world,” says Stephen Brookfield. Such meaningful work will not be easy, he continues. It requires rigorous critical reflection on our practice, and a refusal to teach “innocently”: “teaching innocently means thinking that we’re always understanding exactly what it is that we’re doing, and what effect we’re having.”

As you brace yourself to tackle mountains of papers, projects, or exams, here are a few suggestions to make grading a little easier:

A good rubric can save you time and frustration. When we’re evaluating student work, it’s easy to get distracted by the surface features (formatting, sentence structure…the list goes on).

By some estimates, up to 40% of students suffer from test anxiety; around 20% experience anxiety severe enough to compromise their academic performance. A modicum of anxiety spurs focus and motivation; but severe test anxiety is associated with reduced working memory, confused reasoning, increased mistakes, and (no surprise) lower test scores.