Graded

Summer school at the alternative education center ended last week. It was only 18 days. The school year officially starts mid-August. 

(Well, if it starts. We're still not sure if we're doing in-person or distance. Apparently the district is discussing, but there is no official word. Yet.) 

And, with the end of the summer session came the grades. Which is something I've never had the opportunity to do. Yay? 

There is a program that kind of does school for the kiddos. I'm familiar with it as they use it frequently at the continuation high school. Each assignment is graded in the usual percentage manner. Using those programs, one can just look at the grade and transpose it as the grade for the class. 

But, I was not in charge of either of those classes. The kiddos were enrolled in two, and the other two (permanent) teachers oversaw them. My class was called "study skills". 

Now, I did answer questions about how to log into the program. I spent one day helping the kiddos complete an assignment about creating a budget (sort of). But I didn't have specific work for them to do. I hadn't assigned anything worth points. They had nothing to turn in. 

How was I supposed to give them grades? 

In the end, I came up with a participation point system. 

I figured that would be as fair as anything else. If they showed up and participated (which they kind of had to do as I asked each student specific questions), they got the day's points. If they didn't... 

But then there was the Brandon clause. Brandon showed up about half the time. And he participated... about half the time. There were two sessions where he logged in, but when I asked him a question, he stubbornly left his feed on mute. And he had his camera off. So, for all I knew, he had logged in and walked away. 

Or fell asleep. 

So, full points? Nope. But giving him a zero when he went to the trouble to "show up"? That's not fair, either. 

I figured half points would work there. 

Once I added everything up, I had grades that really did make sense. Brandon got a D. Missing one class dropped the grades from an A to a B. (If we had had more sessions, missing one class wouldn't have made as big an impact.) And most of the students, who hadn't bothered to show up at all, got incompletes. 

I was quite pleased with my solution. Once the school year starts in earnest, they'll be doing actual work with actual points, so the grading won't be as weird. But summer school sessions are a bit weird.