Wednesday, June 2, 2021

The New Mess

Transition time. 

There are two weeks left of school. (Actually, by the time you read this, there will be two days left. I'm always writing about last week.) The previous Friday was my last day in the eighth grade English long-term assignment as I had reached my maximum. For the last two weeks of school, I took an assignment in a high school SDC math class that had had a succession of subs for the last two months.

So going in, I knew things were going to be a bit of a mess. 

And it was as bad as advertised. 

But I chose this class deliberately. (I had a choice of four assignments.) I figured I could do the most good here, getting things organized before the end of the school year. 

On top of the whole lockdown/distance/hybrid learning thing we've been doing all year, these kiddos haven't had a steady teacher since February or March. (It was hard to tell.) 

Once I got their lesson plans sorted (at this time of year it's just prep for a final, but their final is going to be a bit different due to their circumstances), it was time to tackle their grades. 

They had been getting assignments. Those assignments were in their Google Classroom classwork feeds. Alas, no one had been grading those assignments or inputting them into the gradebook. It took a while to figure out what was in the gradebook and what wasn't. 

One class had a month-long gap of assignments graded. (Things were graded for the beginning of February and then the end of March, but not the month or so in between.) Two classes only were missing grades for April and May. 

(Oh, and then once I got that sorted, I accidentally added the math assignments to the English class. Those had to be deleted, deleting the assignments from the math class in the process. But that's a whole different story.) 

Surprisingly, it only took about a week to sort things out. Well, mostly. I can't give the students this past semester back.

15 comments:

  1. Planning makes teaching easy.Interesting to read.

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    1. It's great when there's a plan in place. Alas, for this class...

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  2. Glad you got things sorted out, sounds like a bit of a nightmare to me!

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  3. That's great that you chose a spot where you thought you could do. Enjoy the summer break coming up.

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  4. Whew, no wonder you said you needed to do nothing for a while. Your brain must be totally melted by now. I hope you get enough time to recharge!

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  5. Someone wasn't doing his job! Crappy you had to play catch up.
    With all the distance learning, I read that up to a third of the kids were going to be taking their grade over. Sound close to you?

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    1. We do social promotion here, so they won't be repeating the grade. They may have to repeat classes, though. Not as many failing their classes as you'd think, but next year they'll have to assume that not everything that was usually covered was covered.

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  6. It's been a rough year for the students, hasn't it?

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  7. It has been such a trial for students and teachers alike. They're lucky to have a sub who can step in and tidy up the mess. Hope they appreciate you.

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    1. I doubt it. But I feel like I accomplished something, and that's all that really matters.

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  8. The maths class is lucky they got you in at the pointy end of the semester. Imagine if they got another sub who didn't do the marking?

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  9. What a mess. I feel bad for the students and teachers. Talking about winging it... It feels like things are opening up so I'm hoping your upcoming school year will be somewhat normal, a lot normal.

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    1. Should be. Unless cases spike in the summer, the district is planning on reopening fully next fall.

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  10. These on line classes...... I think the kids are really missing out something.
    I mean when we were in school, what did we look forward to? Mixing with the other kids, right? That is what they will be missing.

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