Apologies for any redundancy from previous posts, but one of the most common worries, concerns, and fears of new teachers (I serve as my school’s lead new teacher mentor) and from participants in my summer Lit and Lang APSIs is managing essay grading: how can I grade all of these essays, provide feedback, and still have time to eat, sleep, groom myself, and maintain any sense of a personal life?  In what follows, I’ll offer some ideas from my experience.

My Background:

A little bit of info about my schedule: I teach AP Lit (3 sections, 77 students total) and AP Lang (2 sections, 50 students) at Brookwood High School, the largest high school in the state of Georgia (3900 students).  I generally have 3 of one and 2 of the other, but it may switch based on enrollment each year.

I have two periods off (one for planning and one for new teacher mentorship duties) but I tend to only use one of those periods for “planning” or grading. I usually have my students write three of each essay type (Q1, Q2, Q3) over the course of a year.  My school has 52 minute class periods and we meet five days a week.  We have Securly, which allows me to monitor web use and block websites in real time in class, so I generally have students do their timed writings on their Chromebooks.  We have a school-wide policy “banning” cell phones in class, although it’s new and not fully enforced yet.

Here are some of my ideas and observations-I hope they help you!

1. Planning and scheduling.  

One thing that can really make it hard to get motivated is the endless pile of essays.  I go out of my way, with two different AP preps, to schedule all timed writings at least a week apart.  I don’t want to have to switch from a stack of Lit poetry essays to a stack of Lang synthesis essays, so I stagger essays (usually by 2 weeks) to keep myself from feeling buried.  

Another thing I do to keep from getting lost in the fog of essays is to give different prompts for different periods: if we are practicing the AP Lit Q2, for example, I will give three different prose passages for each period, which gives me a variety of things to read.  It also allows me to give alternative prompts for makeups: if a student from my 1st period misses the timed writing, I’ll give them the 6th period prompt, making sure they didn’t get inside information from their classmates. 

I also try to rotate the order in which I grade the essays to keep it fair-I tend to become more lenient (or more annoyed) at the end of essays, so I rotate the order of the class periods that I’m grading each time.  This way, my last period doesn’t get short shrift each time.  I also try to have a day or two scheduled after the essays are turned in where students are doing something independently in order to have in-class time to grade.  I realize that some of you have administrations that expect you to be “actively teaching” your classes every day, and I can’t say much to them other than those people have been out of the classroom for far too long.  If one of my administrators walks in on a day when my kids are reading, or taking an MCQ, or whatever, they understand that those activities are part of the learning process for the course.

2. Grading and Worktime.  

I’ve seen many heated debates about this on the various social media groups for AP Teachers, but I’ll make my position clear: I try not to grade at home, ever.  I do not have young children so there are things that I can do that many of you cannot, and I pass no judgment on those who want to or need to or like to work at home, but I do not.  My goal is to use my time in my classroom to get my work done at work.  Here are a few things I do to make this happen:

1. Student work days are also my work days.  If I give the students a task to work on (MC practice in AP Classroom, or a day to free read or read assigned texts, or work on a project) I try to spend as much time as I can during that period grading.  Obviously answering student questions is the priority, but I can usually get 25-35 minutes of solid grading time per period.
2. Working during my planning and after school is a must.  I close and lock my door in an attempt to keep myself focused, because I am chatty and easily distracted.  Students tend  to wander in to chat, and I love that, but work time is sacred. 
3. Distractions Part 2.  I turn my phone to airplane mode when I grade and close my email on my laptop during grading.  Odysseus has many flaws as a hero, but he wasn’t wrong about the Sirens: I tie myself to the mast during grading.
4. Goal Setting.  I usually try to select an appropriate goal for each grading period, usually a certain number of essays.  My goal is take no more than 3 minutes per essay, using the AP rubrics and my pre-saved comments (more about this below), so I will plan to knock out, say, 15 essays in a class period.
5. Brain breaks.  I still use an old school paper grade sheet for backup, so I usually take a break every 5-10 papers to mark down the scores of what I’ve graded on paper, stretch, and move around.  
6. I work after school but usually for no more than 40 minutes.  We let out at 2:10 and I usually leave by 3:00.

3. Mechanics of Grading. 

 We are a Google Classroom school and I use Google Classroom (not AP Classroom) for my essays.  I don’t stress too much about students getting to use the platform that the exam is on (you cannot assign anything on Bluebook but AP Classroom is closer to the exam format than Google Classroom) because they are building skills throughout the year.  I’m more concerned with skills than platform mastery-kids’ brains are very plastic, as far as technology goes.  If they really want to test the platform itself, there is a Practice Mode in Bluebook that they can play with.

Several things in AP Classroom really help my grading practice:

1. Pre-saved comments. I have a whole host of general and specific comments saved in Google Classroom.  When I notice, for instance, that a student’s thesis is weak, I can type “thesis” in the comments and get a selection of comments already prepared.  

I will often have specific comments saved for each essay, but the vaguer and broader the comments you make, the more likely you can re-use them easily. 

2. Grammar and spelling corrections.  Google Classroom has a built in grammar and spelling checker.  I know that students won’t have access to these tools on test day, but I encourage them to review spelling (red wavy lines) and grammar (blue wavy lines) on their own.  If a student has significant issues, I have them go through and correct all mistakes and write a short synopsis of what they’ve learned from the built in feedback.  (Side note: it’s amazing how many of these corrections students just ignore in their writing!)
3. Attitude adjustment about my role.  I don’t ‘red pen’ much of their writing-I’m sure many of you have conflicting feelings about this, but I don’t have the energy to serve as a technical editor.  If there are major issues (a student regularly misuses colons) I can offer some directed guidance, but correcting a bunch of comma splices in an essay takes time and, truthfully, doesn’t usually lead to a change in writing habits. 
4. My colleague Allison Crawford and I presented some general tips about this recently for a PD at our school.  Here are the slides from that presentation.

4. Rubrics.  

I have multiple variants of the AP Lit and Lang rubrics already loaded into Google Classroom.  Some of them are based on a 100 point standard gradebook scale and others use a 6 point scale that I convert to a gradebook score.  I also have versions that offer partial credit (.5 in Row A, 3.5 and 2.5 in Row B) that I use as training wheels in the early part of the first semester.  I also offer a version without the Sophistication Point (Row C) and I don’t even introduce that point until October or November because too many of my high fliers try to put the cart before the horse and focus on Row C without solid work in Row B.   

I familiarize my students with the rubrics within the first few weeks of school and grade using those rubrics all year long.  By the time we get to November, I can grade essays using only the rubric and ask students to self-reflect on why they got the scores they did.

5. Whole Class Feedback Docs.

For each essay I offer a whole-class feedback document that summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of the prompt in general.   I post these whole class feedback documents and, if necessary, ask students to read them and write reflections on how they apply to their individual papers.  

To create these documents, I take notes on common errors, flaws, strengths, and ideas as I go.  (Tech side note: I LOVE the ReMarkable Paper Pro2 for physical notetaking and I did not receive anything for this shameless plug!)  I also make notes of potential exemplar essays that I might share and look for examples of strong and weak thesis statements that I will share (anonymized) with the class.

Here’s an example of an AP Lit Q2 prose Essay whole class feedback document over “The Rock Eaters” prompt.   Here is an example of an AP Lang Q2 Rhetorical Analysis whole class feedback document over “The Company Man”.   

6. Peer Review

Another way to provide some of the “red pen” service on a paper without spending my time on it is to have students do peer review or peer editing either before submission or after grading.  It’s pretty easy to do in Google Classroom, once the essay is graded or before it is submitted.  Here is a copy of a Peer Edit form for AP Lit Q1 (Poetry)

7. Conferencing and remediation

Of course, students will have questions about their grades, even if they have the rubrics and some comments.  I make myself available before school and a few days a week after school for conferencing, but I generally don’t take class time to do it.  I encourage students to meet with me if they have questions, and I require it of those who have failed the assignment, but I also place some of the burden on the student.  I don’t have time to address their concerns before or after class most of the time, and I want to encourage them to seek COMPOSITION help and not nitpick about grades.  

I tell students up front that I won’t answer the following questions directly:

1. What did I do to get (insert score) here?
2. How can I get a higher grade?
3. Why didn’t I score as high as Person X?
4. What’s wrong with my writing?

Instead, I ask students who want to conference to come to me with a plan.  They must come in ready to explain to me what they feel needed improvement in their essays and how they would improve those things.  This eliminates many of the grade-grubbing conversations, but those students who really think I’ve missed something can come with arguments for that claim.  I make mistakes and I will re-grade anything I’ve fumbled. 

We generally don’t offer grade replacement in AP unless a student fails to show mastery (below a passing grade of 70) so I generally don’t accept revisions unless the student really wants to do it for training.  I don’t like the slippery slope of replacing any grade that a student isn’t satisfied with even though I understand the arguments for it, but I simply don’t have time to regrade the same essay three times so a student can get the numerical grade they desire.

8. Handwritten vs Typed Essays

I don’t want to dip into the minefield of AI and the harm it’s doing to student writing, but I have not shifted back to handwritten essays for two main reasons:

1. Students will not be handwriting their exams
2. It takes me a lot longer to read and interpret handwritten essays than typed ones

I do, occasionally, use the handwritten essay as a jumping off point.  I had students draft their first poetry essay this year by hand (no phones, no computers) and then peer edit those essays in class.  I had them type these essays up for final submission in Google Classroom, but I also required them to submit their written drafts with peer review. This allowed me to catch at least a handful of students who used AI between initial drafts and completion of the typed version. 

CONCLUSION

I hope what I’ve offered here can give some of you some easy strategies to help cut down on your grading stacks.  Just remember to give yourself some grace and build in time for something other than essay grading.  

Questions?  eric.rovie@gcpsk12.org

Eric Rovie teaches AP Lit and AP Lang at Brookwood High School in Snellville, GA. He also works for Gwinnett County Public Schools as a Gifted Endorsement instructor, training GCPS teachers to teach gifted students. He is also a veteran AP Literature Reader and Table Leader, an AP Literature and AP Language Consultant for the College Board, and an AP English consultant for the Georgia Department of Education.   His AP Lang classes were filmed in November of 2025 for a joint project between the Georgia Department of Education and Georgia Public Broadcasting.  This special, focusing on Gifted Education, will air on PBS in early 2026.Previously, he was a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Webster University, Georgia State University, Agnes Scott College, Georgia Perimeter College, and Saint Leo University, and has published book chapters and articles on topics in ethics, the history of philosophy, and political theory.  Eric has also worked as a staff writer for The Onion, The AV Club, PopMatters, and Chunklet.