Madison teachers share their thoughts on essays

Story by Sawyer Jenkins

When you’re in a class full of students, it makes you wonder, do our teachers really read all of our essays? Madison teachers share some insight. 

“Especially at first, to get to know the students, I do read all of them, every word of them. To get to know the writing style and to help students understand the rubric and the amount or the commitment they have to have to it and what the expectations are, yes. 
Later, I spot checks, so I’ll always grade like, if there’s five, I’ll always grade like two,” Mr. Ingram said.

Mr. Ingram doesn’t grade all of his assignments but other teachers do. Mr. Snelgrove teaches Enriched English and found a way to get it done quickly.

“I learned, if I take five and I say, okay, I do five a day, it actually took me less time to do five a day for two weeks or less than it did for me to wait three weeks for Spud Harvest or Christmas break,”  Mr. Snelgrove said. “So once I learned that, I felt like a smaller amount was easier to manage and be fair to the students, because students should know that their teacher has read what they’re grading, so that’s why I did it that way.”