The life changing magic of marking: A post-Kondo approach to assessment in English

The 2018 VATE annual state conference theme, ‘What do we do, now that we are happy?’ invited us to wonder whether we are happy. If we are unhappy, especially in our roles as teachers, could it be that marking plays a part in this? If our students are not happy at school, could marking be involved? Might changing marking processes create more fulfilling relationships and work for teachers and students? The Konmari tidying phenomenon has brought the word ‘joy’ to the attention of the world, and this article links the pursuit of happiness in education to the joys of an organised life. It considers how marking might be joyful, and describes the conference workshop exploring this idea. I draw here on two versions of Marie Kondo’s philosophy: Spark joy: An illustrated masterclass on the art of organsing and tidying up (2016) and The life-changing manga of tidying up: A magical story (2017). Kondo claims that ‘the real tragedy is to live your entire life without anything that brings you joy and never even realise it’ (2016, p. xvii); she is referring here to possessions. What if the real tragedy of teaching is to live our entire working lives without marking bringing us joy and never even realise it? The teachers in this VATE conference workshop, however, definitely did realise it, and suggested multiple ways that marking actually sucks the joy from teaching, that marking is: boring; time-consuming; meaningless; overly standardised; difficult; excessive; numerical (I just typed ‘numberical’- very Freudian!) and fetishised. Marking is definitely not making these teachers happy.