Why I don’t mark in RED pen!
I don’t mark my students tests and assignments in red pen, it is a personal choice.
I don’t like the correlation between red pen and a negative feeling of judgement. In every cliche movie the student receives a mark on a test of paper with a BIG FAT RED letter grade on it. When did that become the norm?
Why should I have to fit into that mould?
For that reason I mark in marker; yellow, orange, blue, teal, fushia, purple, green, aqua, magenta, whatever marker I pick up, I mark with (even if it is red).
So, I guess I lied. I do mark using red sometimes, but just as often as I mark with any other colour, because why should red get the bad rap, or any other colour for that matter?
Story time: When I became a teacher a couple of my friends bought me a grad gift and it was literally a BOX of red pens (over 500), I also got 100 from a cousin as a grad gift (they didn’t talk, just a coincident!). It was like becoming a teacher gave me the ability to use that dreaded red pen and evaluate the works of children. And yes, I still do this - it’s the unfortunate part of my job, but I feel like a piece of me is “sticking it to the man” by marking in marker / pencil crayon / crayon.
This may seem like such a trivial little thing to 99.9% of you out there. And I get that. But for that 0.1% of you, who like to defy social norms like me… CHEERS!
