Missed Deadline

I started a new long term assignment on Wednesday. There are a few things that I have to do right off the bat with these assignments. Get keys to the classroom. Figure out what I need to teach. Check out a teacher computer. And get access to the gradebook.

This school has a whole new administrative team, so I did not know who was in charge of adding me to the online gradebook. I asked around. Found out. Sent him an email. 

I had to do something in the main office, so I dropped by the assistant principal's office. Mr. R was not there. Since clearly he was busy and perhaps not on campus, I figured I'd circle back the next day. 

(I did get keys and a teacher computer. I was scrambling for lessons, but that's pretty normal for a new gig.) 

For reasons I do not know, the previous sub had not gotten access to the gradebook. Ms. S, the instructional assistant (who's been working at that school for many years), had been keeping up with the grading and had a paper gradebook for the kiddos. So, while there were grades, the kiddos could not see them. 

On Thursday, while in the main office on other errands, I managed to find Mr. R in his office. I asked about gradebook access. He had gotten my email and was going to take care of it. Since I was there, he did it right then. (And I had other questions for him.) 

And, because I knew, I asked the question. When were progress report grades due? 

4 PM. That day. (We were having this conversation at about 2 PM.) 

Yeah. Not going to happen. 

(First I had to set up the gradebooks. Then input the assignments. Then the grades. While I know how to do this, I don't know how to do it well. There's a lot of searching for things and going back to make sure I didn't leave anything out. Grade ranges have to be entered. And that's all before entering their progress report grades into the system.) 

Seriously, the previous sub should have taken care of it. They open the report cards four to five days before they're due, so he could have totally finished that on his way out. But again, he never got the gradebook access, so...

While I felt bad, I knew this one was beyond my control. I let Mr. R know those grades weren't happening. And he understood. 

(How did I know grades were due? Because they always seem to be due when I start a long term. I wrote about it five times in the last three years: one, two, three, four, and five.)

On Friday Ms. S input all of the outstanding grades. It took her all day. She's a rockstar. (Seriously, getting up to speed on this assignment is so much easier with Ms. S there to handle a lot of the administrative tasks that I'm usually scrambling to get under control.)