Tonight I've calculated all my grades into my Engrade account, and bright and early tomorrow I'll transpose them to the School's X2 account for them to be locked and loaded before High Noon! Done playing Bingo with rubrics and ready for bed.
Seems that no matter when you close grades in the classes, there are always a few stragglers, absentees, field-trippers, and college visitors that have to make up work in the 11th hour. This isn't a problem normally, but between all the Juniors being tested with PARCC, as well as Career Day and College Prep Days, many hours of class time and make up opportunities go by the wayside.
Plus, being an English teacher, I don't give many multiple choice tests, matching or true false quizzes. The unit and end of term tests are supposed to see how much they have actually mastered and added to their knowledge on a giving period, genre, term, era and so forth. Thus I need to measure that by how they own it, use it and create it in writing. Thus laborious task of wading through the stacks of multi-page tests that start with the lowest level of knowledge acquired, defining, and progressing to analysis with synthesis to show a complex comprehension and command.
I'm very tired, the sleet is falling on my skylights and I know I must wake up early to windows of grade sheets where I'll carefully enter, recheck, and post my grades. I'll try not to think if the district is measuring me by the numbers that are generated and aggregated with this post. Whether it's bell curves or percentages of too-high or too-low that my catch a search bot or pointer finger. These days it's not only the student who have to measure up to high stakes standardized tests, but the teachers and, slowly but surely, the administrators, are having their professional performance constantly measured by the students in our charge performances, as well.
It seems I've gone from publishing, that was one form of professional gambling, to education where no one strategy is in played long enough to see if it works. No sooner does one start to get traction, than the Dept. of Education (State or Federal or both) cries out, "Bingo we have a winner", and what every school of thought has become the new standard (often an old system with a new name) gets the machinery turning in a new direction!
I'm chasing my tail tonight....And Bingo was her name-o!
Good night, Gamblers and Graders, G'night!
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