I have a confession to make: I procrastinate my work.
Specifically, I procrastinate my grading. I procrastinate my paperwork, too; if I’m not the last one every year to get my self-evaluation done, I’m the runner-up. It’s almost a point of pride for me to refuse to turn in my Intent to Return paperwork until it is appallingly late; I dress it up as a sort of protest, because I hate the system — my school requires teachers in February to sign a letter of intent that says we do mean to return for the next school year, and listing the classes we would like to teach (There is also an option on there for “I would like to work for the school district, but I am willing to transfer schools” which I have never and will never check, because if anyone puts me into a middle school, I’m quitting on the spot and becoming a meter maid. Or maybe one of those guys who spin signs for tax preparers.), but then they don’t actually offer us a job, or tell us what we will be teaching, until JULY. I hate that we are supposed to commit to the school MONTHS before they have to commit to us — and in some cases, they don’t tell us the classes we are teaching until the school year starts: in 2021 I was teaching a full set of online classes, but I did not know until an administrator emailed me and asked “Hey, how do these students I have registered for your class sign into the Zoom?” ON THE FIRST DAY OF CLASSES. So yeah, the system pisses me off: but also, I do intend to return, and the people who need my signed letter — specifically my principal — are not the people who set up this obnoxious unbalanced system. So there’s no particular reason why I procrastinate signing the letter; I just do. Like with all of my paperwork. And all of my grading.
I don’t like admitting it, because I’m a teacher, and I’m supposed to set a good example for my students; I’m supposed to not only teach them that, in the real world, deadlines matter, and organization and a work ethic are important; but I’m supposed to enforce that learning by requiring them to hold to deadlines, to be organized, to develop a work ethic, so that they will be prepared for the real world. If I don’t prepare them for the real world, I’ve been told, then not only will I be setting them up for a rude awakening when they get fired from their jobs, but also I am tearing apart the foundations of our society by eliminating personal responsibility, which means that everything in this country will fall apart when this current generation gets out of school and goes into the real world.
Where have I been told this? On Twitter, of course. Where I was this morning when I should have been working.
Please don’t get me wrong: I have a strong work ethic. I take personal responsibility for the tasks that are required of me. If anything, I take too much responsibility, and work too hard; where I could just shrug cynically and say “Hey, if those rotten little punks don’t want to read the book, then they’ll fail and they’ll deserve it,” instead I say, “Maybe I should read it to them in class, so I can explain it and make it more interesting, and they can at least understand what’s in the book and what it means, even if they aren’t reading it on their own.” Does that require more of me? It does. Not only do I have to work harder in class, then, but also it means I can’t assign quiet independent work in class, and get my grading done while my students are working; that means I have to do my grading outside of class, which inevitably means I have to do it on the weekends.
Which causes a secondary problem: because I put so much effort into my daily classes, trying to run every lesson, keep every kid involved, cover every topic with them and make the information interesting, so I can be (at least somewhat) sure that they understand and are learning, I have little energy or motivation at the end of the week to do grading. And frankly, at the end of the week of work, I think I deserve a break: and I’m right. I do deserve a break. Teaching is a hard job, and I work very hard at it. It’s important to me: I recognize the value of education, and the value of an educated populace; I think of it as my most valuable contribution to a world that has been very generous to me in my life — and also, I’m good at it. And my students need to learn, and they need to have good teachers and good adults in their lives, and I am all of those things. So while I am at school, and after school, and during my lunch breaks, and so on, I work as hard as I can to do as much as I can for my students.
The result, then, is that on many weekends, I don’t do any grading. Even though I haven’t done it over the week at school, either. Because I’m tired, and because I deserve a break, and weekends are what I get.
The result is that it takes me too long to grade.
It’s a problem. It’s a problem for a lot of reasons: first because it’s bad teaching practice. Feedback should come quickly: students (like anyone) forget in short order what they did on an assignment or how they did it; if they get the assignment back with feedback within a few days, then they can take the feedback as constructive suggestions on how to improve. But if they get the work back two weeks later, or three weeks later, or four, five, six, seven, even eight weeks later — and yes, I have done that — then it’s useless. They don’t even remember doing the assignment. I have frequently handed back a paper to a class, and had them say “What is this? Oh man — I forgot all about this.” I cringe every time. And tell myself I’ll do better: I’ll spend more time grading, less time doing nothing at school or doing other things at home. The job is important, after all.
But then when the weekend comes, I can’t bring myself to do it. And there are all of the other things that I also need to do: I need to spend time with my wife, who is my whole world; and as important as my students are, and as important as teaching is, she is more important. Much more important. Orders of magnitude more important. Plus, spending time with her makes me happy: which does have the added benefit of helping me recover from the work week, which then gives me more energy to teach as well as I can in the next week. Which is also important: and maybe more important than getting those grades done. The same goes for spending time with my pets, and also working on my house, or going to the gym. All of them are important — the gym helps reduce my stress, and will keep me healthy, which will help me live longer (certainly something that teaching will not do for me…); working on my house makes me more comfortable, and also helps increase the value of the house, which means I will be more financially secure in the future — which not only reduces my stress, it also helps to ensure that I will be able to keep this important job in this underfunded, underpaying state of Arizona.
And so on. There are always reasons to do things other than grade: and I don’t mean bullshit reasons like “I just don’t really feel like it right now,” but valid reasons, genuine excuses: other important priorities that should come first. So I put them first. And so I don’t grade.
And then there are the feedback loops.
You see, because I know that I take too long to grade, and I give myself all the excuses I could ever want to keep allowing myself to do that, I can’t bear to make my students stick to hard grading deadlines. Even though it would be easier, because that way there would be less for me to grade. Even though it would be “teaching them about the real world and taking personal responsibility.” Even though it would make the work more meaningful when they did it, because when they come back weeks or months after an assignment was to be turned in and they complete it then, the chance that they are still able to learn from the lesson is almost nil. But I can’t do it. If I don’t stick to hard deadlines, how can I make them?
I mean, of course I could. We have unequal power in the class. I get to set their deadlines, and the consequences for missing those deadlines; and I get to decide when I complete my own work. I have the power to make these determinations.
But I can’t justify it. I can’t justify the time I take to do the grading, so I can’t justify holding my students to a short, hard deadline, and then taking weeks and weeks to give them back the grade on the assignment they turned in on time.
So I don’t hold them to deadlines. Which is how I contribute to the imminent collapse of our society, according to those Twitter pundits who told me that holding students to deadlines is critical for preparing them for the real world.
It’s also, I know, how I leave an opening for students to put themselves into a real bind. Because I don’t hold them to deadlines, and I don’t get mad and yell and get them in trouble and ruin their GPAs if they don’t get the work done for my class, I make it that much easier for them to procrastinate the work for my class. And, see, they have so many classes, and so much homework for all of them, and their math and science and history teachers all keep hard deadlines, and chew them out and shame them when they miss deadlines, and refuse to let them turn work in late, and therefore ruin their grades if they don’t get the work done — that they always choose to do the work on time for their math and science and history classes. They know they can take a little more time for Humphrey’s work. So they take it: because after a long day of sitting in classes and trying desperately to learn — and they are trying — even when it is boring, even when the teacher doesn’t communicate well, even when other things in their lives or in the classroom are distracting them, they are tired. And understandably so: it’s hard work trying to learn. Especially trying to learn complicated advanced concepts like how to write an essay. But that’s okay, they can put off Humphrey’s work; he doesn’t care.
Let me just set the record straight on that one, because it makes me mad every single time they say it.
Are you listening, kids? (Of course not.) Here it is anyway.
I care.
I care about how you act in my class. I care about whether or not you are paying attention to me. I care about whether you are looking at your phone or if you are reading. I care about whether or not you turn in the work on time. I care about your grades. I care about your test scores. I care about everything. All of it. Always. I care.
I just don’t have the energy to apply pressure on all of you, all the time. I can’t do it. I can’t make the lesson interesting and useful to all of you, while also fighting to make you listen to the lesson I have already put effort into to make it interesting and useful. I can’t stand to have to fight to make you listen to my interesting and useful lesson: you should just fucking listen. Okay? You want to talk about not caring? How about all of you little punks not caring about how much you annoy me when you don’t listen to me no matter what I do or say? Even after you say you like me and like my class? You still don’t listen, and you don’t care how much that hurts, and how frustrating that is. You make me fight you, make me make you follow the rules you know you have to follow already, and then when I ask you to follow the rules, you argue, and you fuss. So I have to fight harder.
Think of this: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, right? So if it takes a certain amount of time and effort to overcome your resistance to doing work in class any given day, and I have to be the one to overcome that resistance for you, then that means the effort put into my action to create the reaction in you that allows you to learn is just as hard for me as it is for you. So if you struggle to make yourself pay attention and try, I struggle just as hard to make you pay attention and try. The difference is, I have to struggle with 20 of you, every single period, every single day. And then once I have managed the struggle, and gotten you all to pay attention and try — then I have to teach you. And make it interesting and useful for you, so you can keep paying attention. And that takes effort, too.
So much of the time, even most of the time, I just can’t do it. I can’t put out that much effort in every class, every day, with every student. So I blow it off. I procrastinate. I just start teaching the lesson, knowing that not everyone is paying attention; hoping that somehow they will listen to me as I try to make it interesting and useful, and they will do the work themselves, and then I will be able to help them learn.
It never happens. Not with the whole class. Not with a whole unit.
So I have to let it go. And since I let it go, I can’t demand that they put out more effort than I’m willing to put out. To be clear, again: I could do that. Lots of teachers do that. The fact that I don’t do that is one of the reasons they like me. But because they like me, they feel more casual about my class, and it’s easier to blow off work for a class that is more casual, especially when the teacher is cool and doesn’t care about deadlines. (I. CARE.)
So the students blow off deadlines, and that creates more work for me. Because I need to try to track them down to get the work completed so I can grade it; or by the time they get around to it, they don’t remember how to do it, and I have to take some time to remind them of what the assignment was. Or they blow off some assignments, which lowers their grade, and then they need to make sure other assignments are perfect so they can bring their grades back up — and that means they need to check with me about what the expectations are, and what they need to do, and if the work they have so far is good enough or how they can change it to make it better and get a better grade. Which is freaking awesome: because it means they’re learning, and they want to learn, and they want me to help them get better, and that is the whole point of all of this —
And it takes more time and energy. Which I am happy to expend on students who ask for help, especially the ones who have been struggling and have low grades because they haven’t turned anything in, which always makes me worry that they don’t understand the assignment or the content at all; when they ask for help, and I help them, and they get it, then I feel like I won. And they turn the work in, very very late, and I grade it immediately because I’m so pleased they got it done, and then I am complimentary in their feedback because I want to encourage them to keep turning in work and showing improvement.
Which, of course, just encourages them to keep turning work in late, and getting extra individual attention, and getting nice feedback and so on.
But then I’m even more tired, and so I get even less done for the class as a whole. Which makes me feel bad, like a slacker, like a bad teacher. Sometimes I get so depressed I can’t stand to work at all. But of course, I keep doing it. Because I have to. Because the students need me. Even if they never act like it.
That’s what procrastination is.
I don’t know how or when or why we all forgot that, all got confused about it. Who told us that procrastination was being lazy? Nonsense: blowing off work entirely, never getting it done at all; sometimes that is due to laziness. (Rarely, I would argue. But sometimes.) Procrastinators do the work, we just do it late, or at the last minute, while also applying enormous pressure to ourselves mostly in the form of anxiety. So if you do the work a little at a time from Monday through Thursday, and I cram it all in on Thursday night, and we both turn the work in on Friday — or if I do all the work on Sunday and then turn the work in late on Monday — which of us has done more work? Nobody, of course, unless, as I said, you want to count the extra effort I expended on anxiety and guilt. (And maybe the extra effort you spent on organizing and managing your time and the project — but you loved doing that, and we all know it.) We all do the work. It is certainly true that waiting until the last minute frequently limits the amount of time we have to put into the work: but in my experience it does not at all limit the effort put into it. That is a separate decision, which lots of people make — and sometimes it is due to laziness, I agree. But procrastination is not lazy.
It’s prioritizing.
As I said, when I decide on Friday night that I would rather spend an evening with my wife than grade papers, that is a choice I am making based on what I think is most important: not what requires less effort. Okay, spending time with my wife does require less effort: but considering how much time I spend away from her doing work, it should be clear that I don’t always pick the easier path because it’s the easier path. I usually don’t. When I do choose to spend time with her, it is partly because I have spent all of the effort I can possibly spend, and now I need to do something that puts something good back into me: and an evening with the woman I love will do that. (Also I choose to spend time with her because she is the best and most important person in my world, and she deserves to have my time more than any of my students do.) The time I spend writing is time I could spend grading, and believe me, this is not any easier in terms of intellectual effort. I think it is more important, at least once a week, for my self-understanding and my identity. So I prioritize: I make a choice. And that choice means I have less effort and time to spend on the other tasks. I will still spend as much time and effort on them as I can: but sometimes — frequently — constantly — that effort is not my full effort. It just can’t be.
Because I have too much shit to do.
Want me to get all my work done? Reduce my student and class load, without reducing my pay (Because if I get paid less, I’ll need to go find a second job to cover my expenses, and I will not have more time.). Or even better, make all of my students do their part by having them pay attention to my lesson, to my whole lesson, every day, so I don’t have to fight to make them stay on task and learn the content. Though, to do that, you’ll need to lighten their load as well: because believe me, after being told all their lives that they need to learn everything and get good grades OR ELSE THEY WILL BE DOOMED TO A LIFE OF MISERY AND WASTE BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE ANY WORK ETHIC OR RESPONSIBILITY AND THEY WILL HAVE DISAPPOINTED EVERYONE AROUND THEM, they are also trying just as hard as they can: and it isn’t their fault they can’t do everything we demand of them any more than it is my fault.
We are simply demanding too much. And then calling it procrastination when everything doesn’t get done.
This is the point I want to make, and I want to make it twice. Because people on Twitter (Assuming they are people, and not malicious semi-sentient globs of slime) have repeatedly and vociferously claimed that teachers are lazy. We are not. We work as hard as any and harder than most. Of course there are lazy teachers, as there are lazy people in every group; but teaching as a profession takes all that we have, and demands even more. Students, like all children, are a bottomless hole of need: they always need something, and then they always need more. It’s fine; they are children, they’re not supposed to be self-sufficient. But there is never an end to their need. So we who provide care to children, of any kind, we have the full range of tasks required of us professionally — and then we have all those children. And all of their needs. It’s too much: and so I, like all of my colleagues, prioritize. Some of us choose to prioritize work over family, or over ourselves; some of us choose one aspect of work over others — I have colleagues who spend enormous amounts of time and energy making sure that their students are happy, even if the curriculum maybe doesn’t all get covered; I have others who make sure that the students are understanding all the work, even if that means they maybe don’t have the most fun and exciting classes; I try to make sure that my students find some interest in and affection for my subject, because I want, more than anything else, to get them to be readers: and thus lifelong learners, who will grow far beyond what I could ever impart to them. But the issue is, we all try to do all of those things, all at the same time, along with doing all the rest of our work; and it is too much to get done. So we do what we can, and procrastinate the rest, and when we finally run out of time — we say to ourselves that we’ll work on that next year.
And now let me make the same point twice: students need help. They need support. Not all of them need the same help in the same way, but all of them need something. All of them. Partly because they are children: and partly because everybody needs help; everybody, young or old, needs something. What students need more than anything else is grace. They need kindness. They need us to try to understand what each of them individually needs, and to try to provide that to them, as much as we can. We need to know where our boundaries are, when we run out of energy and the ability to give; because they can’t be expected to know how much is too much, and they will always need more than we can give. It’s fine: they are children. Children need support. And there are fortunate children who get most of what they need provided for them by their families and friends; those children don’t need much from their teachers and other caretakers. But they still need something: even if it’s only praise for a job well done, and a suggestion about where they could go next.
The other reason why students all need help and grace is because we demand too much from them. We give them limited time, limited resources, and the limited energy and support of their teachers, and expect them to accomplish — everything. Not only to learn all of the subjects which their teachers have spent our professional lives mastering, but also to learn everything else they need for adult life. And apparently — according to Twitter, at least — they need to learn it all NOW, before they get into the “real world” and discover that they are unprepared for the harsh realities of life. They need to learn to do their work, and do their best, all the time, no matter what they may have going on in their lives outside of school; because in the REAL WORLD, you don’t get to give excuses: you just get fired if you show up late or miss a day of work or miss a deadline or break the rules in any way.
Never mind that I have frequently been late turning in my work. Never mind that I have had colleagues and coworkers who show up late, or miss work, all the time. (I tend not to miss work, and I’m obsessive about being on time. But also, I let my classes get off topic at the drop of a hat, and waste all kinds of time arguing with students over silly subjects instead of pursuing curriculum. We all do the things our bosses don’t want us to do.) Never mind that I and several of my colleagues constantly disobey the dress code, or don’t clock in or out properly, or cuss in front of students, or spend time on our phones looking at social media when we’re supposed to be working. Or show up hungover to work. (I’ve never done that one, either. But I did get suspended because of things I posted online about my students. So I guess I never learned that “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all” lesson in high school, huh? Must have missed that day. Probably hungover.)
No: we tell these children, who don’t know any different, don’t know any better, because they have only been in school, because we won’t let them leave, that they have no chance in life if they don’t learn everything we have to teach them RIGHT NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW. And then we give them far too much to learn, all at once. And tell them they not only have to learn all of it, but they have to get high grades, or else they are doomed, and we will be disappointed.
And then we are surprised when they procrastinate? When they blow work off sometimes? When they try to take a little bit of time and space for themselves, to do something they enjoy, after hours and days and weeks of doing work, for no tangible reward? We’re shocked when they sleep until noon on the weekends — and then we call them lazy?
How dare we?
No. Students are not lazy. They are doing their utmost to live up to our impossible standards, to our impossible expectations, even with their limited resources and their nonexistent experience, which means they have not mastered the same coping strategies that we have. They don’t know what to do other than — maybe not do some work. And then we get mad at them for not doing their work, and they feel bad, and they fear the consequences we give them right now so they can learn to avoid consequences later; and all of that adds pressure, which wears them down — and they need to take more time off, to escape from even more work. Just so they can survive.
Just like us.
The answer is: they need to work less. We all need to work less. And if we can’t, then the very least we can do for each other is, when we have the power and the opportunity — be nice. Be kind. Give someone a little grace. And take a little for yourself. Even if it looks to others like you’re procrastinating. It’s better to turn in the work too late, than to work until it is too late.
We’re all doing our best.