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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Cons: You work a lot harder than your paycheck suggests. [/quote] Yeah. There's nothing more to add to that one.

[quote]Many (even most) of your students don't want to learn anything you have to offer.[/quote] I have not really found this to be true. They definitely don't want to do the work, but I do think that most of them know they need to be good writers to succeed in a variety of careers.

[quote]You'll have to teach things that bore YOU rigid to kids who don't want to be at school in the first place (how to write a bibliography and anything about grammar, for instance). [/quote] This is true, though I find I can keep it to a minimum. I address grammar in the later stages of the writing process, not during the rough draft process, as a lot of times bad grammar is the result of students still figuring out what they want to say. But once there are common grammar issues that creep up regularly: comma splices, run-ons, sentence fragments, faulty parallelism, misplaced modifiers, etc.

[quote] You have to read SO MANY ESSAYS, AND SO MANY OF THEM ARE PAINFULLY BAD. Bad like, you wonder how they managed to get to high school in the first place. [/quote] I know this feeling, though thankfully it's been rare. I spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year encouraging confidence and risk-taking in writing. That does mean lots of drafts, but it pays off quickly as students get more invested in writing essays that are interesting to themselves and to you, and essays that actually say something original.

[quote]Grading student writing takes FOREVER. Students do not read your comments. They go straight to arguing about the grade. [/quote] I tell students to write a written response to each of my comments reflecting on how they will apply the feedback for revision or future essays. They must submit the response and let at least 24 hours pass before asking me about the essay/grade. That helped reduce the arguing quite a bit. From the students (parents are a different ball game).

More later![/quote]

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