I have a confession to make…

I quite enjoy marking.

There.  I said it aloud. I know we all moan about marking – grading papers is laborious and can take up a lot of time, especially if you have a lot of students.  But actually, there are several aspects of it that I enjoy.  One of them is the moment when I come across a student quoting from a work written by someone I know.  For some reason, it always makes me smile.  That happened this afternoon and it’s one reason why I thought I would write this quick post.

Another reason is that I like helping people learn, which I suppose is why I went into education in the first place.  My tutor at Edge Hill, the lovely Darren Murrall, once described me as a natural born teacher and I suspect my children would testify to the fact that I can’t help myself.

But the main reason that I enjoy marking is because it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to see students improve.  It’s particularly great when a student takes on board advice that you’ve given and pulls a really significant improvement out of the bag, and that was what happened just before I knocked off work this afternoon.  Not just a smile, but a big grin and a good feeling.