Lunchtime Grading [Open]

[Layla Montgomery]

Lunch was one of Layla’s favorite times of the day. Usually she ate in the teacher’s lounge, but today she had a lot of grading to do. Her students had just turned in their essays, so Layla decided to dedicate her lunch period to starting to work through them. She liked to be prompt with her grading, since she always hated waiting and waiting and waiting for teachers to return her papers when she was a student.

This essay was their second to last one for the year, since Layla didn’t think they’d have enough time to squeeze in reading more than one more book. Perhaps if they finished their next assignment in a timely fashion, than Layla would let them do some sort of free write as extra credit. She’d have to see how the next few weeks went.

However, her students did very well with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and she was pleased with how most of their essays were turning out, at least the one’s that she’s already read. Of course, there were a few who either hadn’t grasped the concept of the play or hadn’t really taken the time to properly construct their essay. There was always at least one or two students in every class, but Layla wasn’t worried. She’d talk with them about it after she handed back the papers and offer them a chance to rewrite it properly.

She was about halfway through her grading when she heard her classroom door open. She glanced up from her papers to see who had walked in, since she rarely got visitors during lunch. Usually her classroom was empty during this time anyway.

[Andreas Pruitt]

Andreas had trouble with his paperwork, mostly on the fact he was over a month behind on all the information that the surprisingly thorough forms needed on the kids whether they were going to be either in college the next year, leaving the P.E. program, or just joining the soccer program at Hammel. This had led him to desperately try to scramble over the last week to talk to all the kids that he needed to get information on before the deadline for the papers came up, often budding into the teenagers’ after school time and lunch period. This had left him losing the favor of many of his students, but he had final gotten the information he needed to finish his work, all he needed was somewhere he could sit down without getting distracted by students and his coworkers.

He knew that most of staff at Hammel left their rooms during lunch, so he had decided to take a seat in a classroom to just finish everything. After he ducked his head into the random classroom holding a few folders full of papers he immediately noticed that he had walked into another teacher working away at the desk in the room and paused for a moment. “Hello, my name is Andreas and I see we both have a massive workload.” Andreas spoke jokingly with a gesture to the his and the woman’s paperwork after a quick greeting.

[Layla Montgomery]

Layla recognized the P.E. teacher from faculty meetings and from occasionally seeing him around the campus. Of course, always teaching on complete opposite ends of the school, they rarely crossed paths enough to really know one another. After all, Layla was always in the English department and she assumed he was always either in the gym or probably on the athletic courts.

She smiled as he introduced himself. “I’m Layla.” She said, once he was done. She wasn’t really in any hurry to complete her grading. The students had just turned them in, so they probably wouldn’t be expecting them back for at least a few days. Andreas did look like he had quite a bit of paperwork to do though.

“Yeah, I’m grading some of my students' essays. You can stay in my classroom if you need some place quiet to work.” She said, eyeing the stack of folders he had in his arms. She’d never actually tried to work in the gymnasium before, but she only assumed that it was probably loud and distracting. And since it was lunchtime, the classrooms were a quiet, and great place to get things done.

“Is that homework?” Layla asked. As far she knew, students rarely had written assignments or homework in P.E. At least, she never had any when she was a student here. Maybe the curriculum had changed since then?

[Andreas Pruitt]

Andreas smiled and let out a happy sigh as the teacher whose room he had walked into didn't immediately tell him that he needed to leave. “Thanks Layla, I'll try not to be a bother.” The Welshman said with a grateful nod to his coworker, he then found himself a desk that was near the front of the room. He was setting down the folders when he heard the brunette ask him about the papers in said folders. “Oh, no. I haven't had give out any busy work to the kids, this is just some things this country's government says I need to get down about the kids height and weight before they graduate.” As he spoke in a bored tone Andreas gave the folders a dismissive wave. Looking up at the teacher’s pile of graded papers he asked with a small hint of his interest, “So, what were the kids writing about? Just about their opinions on something or was it about a book or a play?”

[Layla Montgomery]

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be fine.” Layla wasn’t worried about him bothering her; she wasn’t really in any rush anyway. She only hoped that she didn’t bother him. Layla has always been a very chatty person and was always making conversation, so hopefully she won’t distract him from his paperwork.

Nodding her head, she was a little relieved to find out that the gym teacher didn’t assign homework. That’s probably one of the only classes where students could get a little bit of reprieve from their work. “Well, that’s good. When I went to school here the classes probably would’ve revolted if we got homework during gym class.” She laughed.

She remembered having to fill out something like that for her old teacher’s paperwork during her senior year. It was pretty standard stuff, so Layla barely batted an eyelash at it. She was also an athlete during high school, so those types of forms were always common when trying out and participating in sports teams.

Layla glanced down at her stack of essays. “Oh, they’re writing about A Doll’s House this time. It’s a play.” She answered. She was pretty impressed with how they were handling the prompts she’d given out, though most of them had chosen the same one. “I gave them a few prompts to choose from, but most of them chose to just analyze one of the characters.” That was definitely the popular choice; over half of the papers she’d already graded were about that prompt. Luckily, her students hadn’t all chosen to write about the same character.

[Andreas Pruitt]

Andreas laughed at Layla's comment about what would've happened if homework was introduced to P.E, saying with a small chuckle, “If they had done something like that I would've been the first to take up arms.” The Welshman knew very well that many kids used his class for a relaxation period so they could let out any frustrations they had during the day, and the addition of homework would just be too much for these kids to handle. “I wouldn't do that to them, hell some of them barely do the physical part of the class, I know they wouldn't even touch anything I assigned them.” Andreas spoke jokingly about the laziness of some of his students, hoping that his fellow teacher would be able to sympathize with the feeling.

Andreas raised an eyebrow at the mention of what the students were writing about saying in wondering tone, “I've seen it before, it was pretty interesting. I can see why they'd choose to write about the characters too, it involves a strong female as the lead against society. I'm just curious about one thing, why does the curriculum includes a Danish play and not one of the thousands Shakespeare wrote?” It was an honest question from the 6’6 P.E teacher, he never really thought that English classes taught about other cultures’ writings.

[Layla Montgomery]

Layla nodded, “There’re always a few students who aren’t very inclined to participate.” There was at least one in every class she taught, even in her more advanced classes. And she could only assume that it was the same in every other type of subject. While Layla always liked her P.E. class, it was a subject that wasn’t always for everyone. Not everyone was athletic, and then you had the more aggressive kids who would walk all over them. P.E. could be intimidating.

“It is a great play.” Layla agreed, though she hadn’t been lucky enough to actually see the stage performance. “It has a lot of complex characters to choose from, so a lot of the students didn’t pick the protagonist. Which is lucky for me, since I don’t have to read a bunch of essays all about the same thing.” She laughed. However, she did think a lot of the students’ choices had to do with the fact that she’d told them that the essay had to be at least two pages longer if they chose to write about Nora. Since she was one of the easier characters to analyze, Layla had to give them at least some kind of challenge.

“Well, we already read A Midsummer Night’s Dream earlier this year.” That was one of Layla’s favorite Shakespeare works, and she thought it was one of his plays that was easier to understand, perfect to start the year off. “And it’s important to have the students read a variety authors and playwrights.” Shakespeare was great and obviously deserved a large chunk of the curriculum; Layla often had a hard time choosing which of his plays to use when she was given the option. “But we still have one more to read before the year is over. I’m still deciding if I want to have them read The Merchant of Venice, or if I want to skip that and start O’Neill.”