By Erika Williams, Matrix Photo Editor – Issue 3, News

This year, teachers have a new challenge to overcome: grading and returning homework, bluebooks, projects and other assignments within five days of collecting the work.

“My teachers always take so long to get work back to me, no matter how small the project. It gets frustrating,” said Junior Kevin Xiao.

This was the previous mindset of many of Xiao’s peers at Athens High School. Now, teachers do not have the option of taking an extended amount of time to grade papers, tests and quizzes.

The five day grading policy is a policy in which teachers have a maximum of five days to grade and return assignments.

Junior Cydney Crew is in favor of the policy. “I think teachers taking any longer than five days causes too much anticipation, and we’ll focus more on getting papers back to see how we did on the last lesson than learning new material,” she said.

But what about reports and long research papers? Many students believe that longer projects should be looked over carefully.

“Teachers always complain about how much grading they have to do. They’re the ones who assigned so much work, so they really have no right to complain,” said Sophomore Andrea Antonetz.

Although Junior Aggie Barnett agreed that teachers should not take a long time grading small assignments, she said, “For reports that take the students weeks to write, teachers should definitely be able to take their time to read each paper thoroughly.”

Senior Luke Bradberry agreed with Barnett. “Thinking about it from a teacher’s point of view, you realize that it might put more pressure and stress on you. You have to have all kinds of assignments graded and returned on top of new assignments,” he said.

Most teachers do not have any problems with the policy. “It doesn’t affect me,” said science teacher Phil Armstrong, “I grade everything by the next day.”

Science teacher Angie McAfee agreed with Armstrong. “I’m fine with it. I think it’s fair, especially to the students,” she said.

“I can see how it could affect English teachers who have lots of big research papers, though. The policy has its ups and downs,” said Armstrong.

Whether the policy is liked or not, it is an official policy, and for now it is here to stay. This policy insures that students are not awaiting the return of their papers for weeks at a time, and also gives teachers a timeline so they are sure to grade assignments.

Erika Williams – Matrix Photos