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On a quiet Thursday afternoon, Ms. Lopez lingered at her desk as the last streaks of daylight slipped through the blinds. A pile of essays leaned against her laptop, where a cursor blinked steadily on ChatGPT’s screen — a small pulse of possibility.
Writing, at its best, is reasoning made visible. Yet in many middle school classrooms, that reasoning is often buried beneath red ink, rushed comments, and the relentless ticking of the grading clock. Teachers like Ms. Lopez know the struggle well—every essay reveals a student’s thinking, but uncovering it takes time that few educators have.
Every teacher knows the scene: a quiet evening, a pile of essays, and a half-empty coffee cup that’s gone cold. You begin strong, full of purpose, determined to give each student your best feedback. But as the night drags on, words blur, energy fades, and the task starts to feel endless.
It’s no secret that grading essays has always been the marathon of teaching. Each paper holds promise and potential, but also hours of analysis, annotation, and reflection. “Grading isn’t just correction—it’s craftsmanship,” says Ms. Lopez, an 8th-grade ELA teacher in California.
Every English teacher knows the crunch: dozens, sometimes hundreds, of essays stack up, each demanding feedback that is fair, detailed, and timely. Students deserve thoughtful comments, but teachers also deserve to reclaim evenings and weekends.
Think of September like a conveyor belt. The rosters roll out, the assignments load up, and before long, essays are sliding onto your desk in waves: rough drafts, personal statements, messy arguments.
Every autumn, while lesson plans hum along and classrooms settle into routine, another season intrudes college essay season. It arrives abruptly, like a flood you swore you saw coming but underestimated all the same. Suddenly, seniors are desperate to distill seventeen years of existence into 650 words, and teachers, already overextended, are expected to shepherd them through the process with grace, patience, and endless hours of commentary.
The reality is simple but heavy: writing takes time, and grading it takes even more. Administrators know this better than anyone, because they hear it from their teachers every semester. Ms. Lopez, teaching 8th grade in Southern California, once joked she could measure the school year not in months but in stacks of essays. Each pile meant another weekend lost.
Picture this: Friday night, fluorescent light still buzzing above, and Mr. Patel has three choices—call it quits, skim the last dozen essays, or push through until midnight. He usually picks the last one. Not because he enjoys it (who does?) but because he knows feedback delayed is often feedback ignored.