You're staring at a stack of 150 essays. It's Sunday afternoon. You haven't started.
If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. According to the National Education Association, high school English teachers spend an average of 25+ hours per month on grading alone. That's more than six hours every week—time that could go toward lesson planning, professional development, or just having a life outside the classroom.
The good news? There are proven strategies to grade essays faster while still giving students meaningful feedback. Some are techniques you can implement today. Others require a shift in how you approach assessment. And one—AI-assisted grading—might change everything.
Before we fix the problem, let's understand it.
Essay grading is slow because it requires multiple cognitive tasks at once: reading comprehension, rubric application, feedback formulation, and grade calculation. Unlike multiple-choice tests, essays don't have right or wrong answers. Every piece of student writing is unique, requiring fresh evaluation each time.
A 2022 study in the Journal of Educational Psychology found that teachers spend an average of 7-10 minutes per essay when providing detailed feedback. For a class of 30 students, that's 3.5 to 5 hours per assignment. Multiply that by five classes, and you're looking at an entire weekend gone.
The mental fatigue compounds the problem. By essay #47, you're not giving the same quality feedback you gave on essay #1. Research shows grading consistency drops significantly after 45 minutes of continuous assessment.
Grading in short, focused bursts beats marathon sessions every time.
Set a timer for 25 minutes. Grade as many essays as you can. Take a 5-minute break. Repeat. This Pomodoro-style approach keeps your mind fresh and your feedback consistent.
Commit to the timer. When it goes off, stop—even mid-essay. Your brain needs the reset.
Teachers who use batch grading report finishing the same stack 20-30% faster than those who try to power through in one sitting. More importantly, their feedback quality stays consistent from first essay to last.
You're writing the same feedback over and over. "Needs a stronger thesis." "Good use of evidence." "Work on transitions between paragraphs."
A comment bank eliminates this repetition. Create a document with your most common feedback phrases, organized by category:
Thesis/Argument:
Evidence:
Organization:
Copy and paste from your bank, then add one personalized sentence specific to that student's work. This hybrid approach—standardized comments plus personalization—cuts grading time by 30-40% while still making students feel seen.
Most LMS platforms like Canvas and Google Classroom support comment banks natively. If yours doesn't, a simple Google Doc works fine.
Traditional grading reads an essay start to finish, evaluating everything simultaneously. Holistic grading reads every essay for just one rubric criterion before moving to the next.
Read all 30 essays looking only at thesis statements. Then read them all again for evidence quality. Then for organization. Then for grammar.
This feels counterintuitive—you're reading each essay multiple times. But it's faster because:
Teachers using this method report 15-25% time savings and more consistent scores across the class.
Vague rubrics slow you down. "Demonstrates understanding of the topic" forces you to interpret what "understanding" means for each essay.
Specific rubrics speed you up. "Thesis statement appears in the first paragraph and makes a debatable claim" gives you a binary checklist.
Before assigning an essay, spend 15 minutes refining your rubric. Add examples of what each score level looks like. The upfront investment saves hours on the back end.
A focused rubric also helps students self-assess before submitting, reducing the number of essays that miss the mark entirely.
This one's controversial, but hear me out.
Research on feedback suggests students can only act on 2-3 pieces of feedback at a time. When you cover an essay in red ink, most of those comments go unread.
Instead of commenting on everything wrong, identify the one or two most important areas for improvement. A student struggling with thesis development doesn't need notes about comma splices right now. Fix the foundation first.
This approach requires a mindset shift. It feels like you're not doing your job if you let errors slide. But targeted feedback produces better revision than comprehensive feedback. And it takes a fraction of the time.
Here's where things get interesting.
AI grading tools have matured significantly in the past two years. They're no longer gimmicks that miss nuance—they're genuine time-savers that understand writing quality.
Take AutoMark, for example. It's an AI essay grading tool that aligns with your rubric and provides detailed feedback on student writing. Teachers upload essays, select their rubric criteria, and receive suggested grades plus written comments within seconds.
The numbers are compelling: AutoMark has graded over 250,000 essays with 97% agreement with human graders. That's on par with the inter-rater reliability between two human teachers scoring the same essay.
Here's how teachers typically use AI grading:
The best AI tools integrate with platforms you already use. AutoMark connects to Canvas, Google Classroom, Blackboard, and Brightspace, so essays flow directly from your LMS.
Is AI grading for everyone? No. Some teachers prefer the direct connection of reading every word themselves. But for those drowning in papers, it's worth trying. AutoMark offers a free tier with 30 credits to test it with real student work.
Before essays reach your desk, have students review each other's work using your rubric.
Peer review serves two purposes: it catches surface-level issues before you see them, and it teaches students to evaluate writing—a skill they'll use on their own drafts.
Structure peer review carefully. Provide specific questions: "Does the thesis make a debatable claim? Underline the evidence in paragraph 2. Is the conclusion just a summary or does it extend the argument?"
Unstructured peer review produces vague feedback like "Good job!" Structured peer review produces actionable suggestions that improve the final draft.
Unlimited revision policies are pedagogically sound but practically unsustainable. If every student can resubmit every essay, your grading load doubles or triples.
Consider limits: one revision per quarter, or revisions only for essays below a certain threshold. Some teachers require students to visit office hours before resubmitting, ensuring they've genuinely engaged with feedback.
These boundaries aren't about being inflexible—they're about being realistic with your time.
No single strategy works for everyone. The goal is building a system that fits your teaching context.
Start by timing yourself. How long does it actually take you to grade one essay? Most teachers overestimate their speed because they don't account for interruptions and mental breaks.
Once you have a baseline, experiment with one strategy at a time. Try batch grading for a week. Build a comment bank for your next assignment. Test AI grading on one class before rolling it out broadly.
Track what works. A grading system that saves 30% of your time gives you back 2+ hours every week. Over a school year, that's 80+ hours—two full work weeks.
Grading faster isn't about cutting corners. It's about recognizing that your time is finite and feedback has diminishing returns.
A student benefits more from timely feedback on two specific areas than comprehensive feedback delivered three weeks after submission. They benefit more from a well-rested teacher who catches the nuance in essay #50 than an exhausted one who stopped reading closely at essay #15.
The teachers who last in this profession aren't the ones who work the hardest. They're the ones who work sustainably.
Start with one strategy this week. Your Sunday afternoons are worth protecting.
Looking for more ways to save time on grading? Check out our guide to The Best AI for Grading High School Essays or learn about Best Practices for Deploying AI in the Classroom.
Ready to try AI grading? AutoMark offers a free tier so you can test it with your actual student essays.