Teacher conspires to 'lose' 60 student essays because she doesn't want to grade them: 'I got through 3 of them before I contemplated dumping them all in the trash.'

Teachers hate grading essays as much as students hate writing them.

When I was in school, I remember students pointing out the hypocrisy of essay deadlines because it often took teachers so long to grade said essays. At the time, I thought it took teachers so long to grade the essays because there was only one of them, and they had 90+ students who wrote them. If it takes 20 minutes to grade each essay, that's 30 hours of extra work on top of lesson planning and teaching during the day. I didn't really think that teachers took a long time grading our essays because they were procrastinating. After all, procrastinating is what teenagers do! Right?

When you enter the working world, a lot of your childhood habits can come back to bite you, and procrastination is no exception. Your boss usually doesn't give you as many hard deadlines as your teachers did, which makes it much easier to procrastinate. The teacher in this story is procrastinating so much on grading her class's essays that she's considering throwing them in the garbage. Talk about a relatable problem!

The teacher in this story asked an online community of teachers about how she could possibly get away with not grading her class's essays.
"I have about 60 essays left to grade and I just DO NOT WANT TO GRADE THESE PAPERS. I got through 3 of them before I contemplated dumping them all in the trash. The students will be upset because they won't be getting them back next week. But, I physically cannot read another one of these papers.
So, how can I get rid of them? Accidentally lose my bag with all of the essays? Accidentally take them with me in the shower? Forget to buy toilet paper? Ideas are welcome."
via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

_{A teacher grades her students' essays, wishing that she were doing anything else.}
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One teacher cheekily suggested that her dog eat her homework, and another shared that her dog once actually ate her class's essays.
“This legitimately happened to me once. I had a bunch of homework papers sitting on the couch and I was in the kitchen. When I came back to the living room they were shredded on the floor. I told the kids to write thank you cards to my dog because they all got credit.”
via Curated Lifestyle (Unsplash+)

_{A teacher's dog generously offers to eat her student's essays.}
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Another teacher suggested that her students could grade their classmates' essays.
"Do peer review instead. Then you don't have to grade them. Have each student read each other's essay. They have to give three comments. First comment on something that doesn't work. Second comment on something that works and third comment on what they like best about it.
Grade that part instead of the essay. Each kid gets a grade on how well they reviewed someone else's essay. MUCH Easier to grade."
While she appreciated the idea, she said that it wouldn't actually work with the type of essay they wrote.
"Unfortunately, it's practice for state testing (outside US here) which the students will be taking in the coming weeks. So, I do feel somewhat obligated to at least half-ass grade it myself. But, thank you for the idea. It inspires ideas that I could try next year."
via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

_{Students peer review each other's essays so their teacher doesn't have to grade them.}
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How would you creatively get rid of 60 essays that you didn't want to grade?