By SPENCER MOORE

Distance learning is a struggle for many parties involved. Whether it’s distracting surroundings, intense workloads, or technical difficulties, parents, students, and teachers all agree that it is not the optimal way to learn and develop interests and skills.

While the focus of struggles is often placed on student’s and their difficulties, teachers also have all of the aforementioned issues. Whether it is helping their children with their schooling, intense grading workloads, or technical difficulties, teachers have issues with distance learning, sometimes arguably even greater than students. However, with all of these responsibilities, there is one role that sometimes finds itself being the subject of teacher procrastination, grading.

 Grading on time is a crucial portion to a successful teachers’ career and their students.

While teachers understand that things should be returned in a timely manner, what sometimes ends up happening is that, like students with their assignments, they get behind in grading; which in turn creates the action of not grading many, or in some extreme cases, any assignments until the end of the quarter or semester. What this does is cause stress in the student’s life and in certain cases, discourages them from even turning in work on time. This develops a habit of procrastination as opposed to a habit of proactivity in learning, which is one of the largest reasons students must attend schools. 

When asked about his thoughts on distance learning in general, Sophomore Max Cannon says, “It is the best that we can do regarding the times we live in. Although class would be significantly more engaging if the focus was on the learning as opposed to the assignments.’’

Many times, the reason for a teacher’s late grading is completely justified. Some of these reasons include childcare, technical issues, or unfamiliarity with the new distance learning protocol and software. The job of teachers is to have their student’s best interest at heart, and will often work to help the students become the best version of themselves they can be. According to edsource.org, in the Los Angeles School District alone, D’s and F’s have increased by a metric of 8.7%. This shows, in the simplest of terms, that teachers are not adjusting to their new responsibilities appropriately.

As distance learning has progressed, teachers have gained a better grasp of the softwares used for our benefit, both through training programs and trial and error. Unfortunately, some teachers do not want to expend the extra effort required to have the students comprehend and retain information while using these new softwares.

Teacher’s are not perfect when it comes to grading, and some can even be resistant to new ways of teaching. However, it is still important to give all people a fair chance to improve on themselves. Distance learning is difficult at times, and everyone involved has their personal difficulties, but it is still the educator’s responsibility to ensure that it goes as smoothly as possible, especially when it comes to grading.