Paperwork, Paperwork and More Paperwork
Does anyone else feel stress over the increasing amount of paperwork that an instructor has to submit? Maybe it stressed me out because I feel it takes time from what we are really suppose to be doing: teaching out students?
That’s a great point. I recently started to do that, give more presentation assignments. It helps the student’s skills in presentations and helps with the amount of paper submitted to be graded.
I agree. There is so much more doucmentation that is required by the school, not just on paper but electronically. I dont mind keeping track of important things, grades, attendance, evaluations, but the procees that is mandated is redundant. Entering the same information via multiple formats is time consuming and frustrating. It seems like the people who come up with these ideas never gave thought to what it is like to actually implement them.
Esperanza, Those are some great questions. Sometimes we can respectfully ask our administrations these questions to drive change. Other times, we can propose new, streamlined systems that they may adopt in the future. Sometimes the best approach to driving change on a problem is to also present a proposed solution.
Dr. Melissa Read
Doing paper work really is a time consuming chore. I understand that documentation need to be accomplished and we need to leave a paper trail but the time we spend on paper work, be it correcting tests or writing care plans, do take time away from the time we could be spending on class prep or face to face student interaction.
It is stressful to have to accomplish forms for tutoring, forms for advising, forms for attendance make-up, forms for test reviews, etc.
Where do all these forms go, and who actually reads them?
You, my friend, have mastered the art of "keeping up". I realized long ago that I don't need to give a test with 100 questions to assess whether or not YOU GET IT!!...(SMILE)
I have learned to make paperwork more simple by assigning tasks and homework that I can grade fast and easily, I prefer project presentations over paper porjects for example, they also provide the students with experience in talking in public and preparing professional presentations.
I cannot agree more, coming from the banking industry it seems that teaching has more paperwork. The new instructor evaluation form used to be one sheet; the new one is 5 pages long…
paperwork will stree me out every time. but I try to put thing in the order according to it's due date.
Dennis, If you are teaching writing, writing exercises are one of the best ways to train students and assess learning. So I do understand where you are coming from. I imagine grading is tough and it's hard to streamline. Sometimes asking students to underline or highlight their thesis and supporting arguments can help.
Dr. Melissa Read
As a writing and literature teacher, I am quite familiar with a lot of paperwork. I always have students write from day one. The only way to teach writing is to have students write often and respond to the writing in a careful and conscientious way. In addition to administrative paperwork, I have a constant stream of papers. I try to keep on task as much as possible and pace myself to avoid getting overwhelmed.
It can become stressful when having to grade multiple lab sheets while teaching the am and pm classes. The stress comes from too little time to keep up. I often find myself grading on the weekends to keep up.
