I had six test pass-back classes today but only about one class worth of things to do. I used the extra time to finish exams.

At the school where I work, for reasons I don’t understand, we are expected to keep students a full 50 minutes on the days we give them back their exams. The trouble is, the best we can hope for is 20-25 minutes of test-related activity and the rest is, more or less, babysitting.

Some teachers show movies, others give assignments, but I’m more prone to allow free time with the admonitions “No fighting. No kissing. No sports.” If the class is in the homeroom and/or the students remember my instructions to always bring something to do in case they finish an assignment early,

When I did this in my early classes, I was able to finish marking the long writing sections on my second year high school (11th grade) exams and tally the marks.

In my third year junior high school classes (9th grade) I was kept busy marking long writing sections. (Note: on some exams, I don’t mark mistakes. Instead I read, give a score, and then mark the section if a student questions his final mark.)

Luckily all that happened after I finished marking my exams. If it hadn’t, I’d probably still be marking exams rather than writing this.