Grading as Care Labor

Self-Care, Student-Care, Community Care

Data often leads us to unexpected places. I’m knee-deep in data analysis for a project on pedagogy and found myself reflecting on something a therapist once told me. I’m a teacher and was talking to her about feeling overwhelmed, and she said something that shocked me:

Therapist: “You should think of grading as self-care.”

Me: WTF?

Therapist: “Really, you should think of grading as self-care, and here’s why. You’re spending so much time thinking about grading, worrying about when you’re going to get it done, worried about your students, and if you set aside some time every day for grading, you could let some of that worry go and find more space for joy.”

Me: Holy Shit.

Now, these are not her exact words (though I most certainly cussed); it was too long ago for me to remember the exact words. But over five years later, this is how I understand what she said to me. And let me tell you, she was right. When I find myself putting off my grading, I find that my worry and, thus, anxiety increase. The more I confront the pile of grading I have head-on, the more space I have in my life for joy, rest, fun, etc.… It frees my worrying mind.

So, do I now see grading as an act of self-care? Yes, I do.

This time, what surprised me was that grading is also an act of care for my students. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always known that students want to know their grades, and they wanted to know them yesterday. And yet somehow, when I asked my students in a survey (for a project that has nothing to do with grading), “what makes you feel cared for in class” and “what makes you feel connected to this class?” I didn’t expect them to write about grades and emails. I expected them to focus on their professor's personality, certain assignments, the material itself (e.g., finding themselves in the readings), or on the language of the syllabus. And some of them did just that. But for most of them? Responsive emails and grading, along with personalized feedback, that’s what made them feel connected and cared for.

I’m not all the way through my data, but a rough estimate has over 50% of the students (this is from a pool of 175 students so far, with hundreds more surveys that I haven’t gotten to analyze yet) saying that regular communication, responsiveness to emails, efficient grading and personalized feedback is what made them feel most cared for in class. Here are a few examples (I received informed consent, and all responses were anonymous):

What did your teacher do to make you feel cared for in the class?

“Feedback about my performance.” “The emails she sent checking in on us.” “Instant feedback and responding to my questions timely.” “Her direct commentary on the contents of class work made me feel heard, and made me feel more comfortable opening up.” “She checked in on us frequently, her response by email are fast.” “Responding to journal entries and commenting on study guides. Also responding to email and sending updates on a regular basis.”

Many of their comments clarified that responsive grading and emails are a route into the course because when students feel cared for and connected to the class, they deepen their engagement with the content. As a teacher, I’ve always assumed that how I presented the material was the key to my success. Still, this data has me rethinking how many keys I have that open the door to student engagement and critical thinking.

It’s important to note that care labor is feminized and thus often dismissed and ignored. Is this — conscious or unconscious, though most likely the latter — why so many of us hate grading so much? Is it because we work in a culture and institutions that don’t value care labor? Is it because we don’t have time for self-care? Or, is it because so many of us who are grading are already the ones doing so much other-focused care labor that we are exhausted and depleted at the thought of doing more? On another note, in R1 institutions, the privilege of being a professor often means the privilege of avoiding grading; that’s more likely the TA’s job. These questions and curiosities require further sociological and personal exploration, as it is clear that patriarchal dynamics shape our labor conditions on campuses.

At the same time, if we’ve never thought about grading as care labor before — and here is where you will see my bright rays of hopefulness — maybe this tidbit of information will motivate us to grade with both speed and care.

The same can be said for email — yet another dreaded task. As teachers, we love lecture planning, coming up with new creative teaching strategies, insightful conversations with colleagues, and lighting our students' fire of creativity and curiosity. But grading and email? No, thank you.

But if we care about our students — and I know that we do — then grading and email might be another route to inspire students to engage class content with creativity and curiosity that we didn’t even know we could take. Audre Lorde famously wrote that self-care was radical and transformative, despite many framing it as self-centered. When we take care of ourselves, we are taking care of others due to our deep and ever-lasting interdependence (and vice versa). And in so doing, self-care is a “radical act” of community building (Lorde). Every grade, comment, and email is thus a way to care for ourselves, our students, and our classroom community.