For the first full week of school (school started on a Thursday of the previous week), I accepted a week-long assignment in ceramics. I covered this class before a couple years ago for three-ish (?) weeks (when the teacher fell off his bike and broke his collar bone), so I had a basic idea of how the class was run.
Because the year is just beginning, the students were given introductory assignments having to do with the syllabus and the elements of art and the principles of design.
The assignments didn't take the whole class period. So, I was on guard to make sure the students didn't get into anything they shouldn't.
It was early into the last class of the day when I noticed that a student wasn't even attempting the assignment.
Lucia didn't speak any English, so her table mates translated. Lucia showed me that she had done the assignment... in a different period.
After some back and forth, I figured out that she was in both third and eighth periods.
Deep sigh.
Every year, there are mistakes in the schedules. Students are missing classes during a period. Students have two classes during one period. Students are missing required courses. Students get the same class twice...
The entire week new students were starting and other students got dropped. A student who was new to the class wasn't in my attendance software three times (that is, three different students).
Some students were moved from one period to another. Some just joined the class.
You really don't want to know what the paper rosters looked like at the end of the week.
I would have thought that Lucia would have caught the error and done something to fix it by eighth period, but the language issue was probably a contributing factor to that slipping through the cracks. (The school is on a block schedule, so third period was on Monday and eighth period was on Tuesday.)
The next day that issue was fixed. Lucia was dropped from third period (to take something else then, I assume). She remained in eighth. At least when she got to eighth period on Thursday, she hadn't already done the assignment.
Everyone wants the end of the week :D
ReplyDeleteVery true.
DeleteI'd probably take a ceramics class twice as opposed to gym or math.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure how a block schedule works. Sounds confusing itself. If periods are split over two days how does that work when you go t school five days a week?
ReplyDeleteThere are eight periods. Four of them one day. Four the next. Alternate days. Last week, Monday was 1, 3, 5, 7. This week, Monday was 2, 4, 6, 8. Every two weeks it repeats.
DeleteCeramics - yes, you certainly have to be flexible to be a sub. My hat's off to you once again. As for that schedule: I know my son's high school had some kind of weird (to me) class schedule. It wasn't block as you describe. It was - you know, I can't even describe it but it was something like the first three days of school each had their own schedule. Then, day four was a repeat of day one, day five was a repeat of day two, and then the next Monday (day six) was a repeat of day three. That pattern repeated for the rest of the semester. They would have signs in the lobby indicating which "day" it was. Why they did this I have no idea but I never did ask my son and now you have me thinking of that again.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why they come up with these weird schedules. My junior high schedule was a particular doozy.
DeleteThe Barbarians have been at schools with a 2 week timetable - I much prefer a 1 week timetable!
ReplyDeleteOur district would send out the class schedules before the first day of school, to work out the problems in advance
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why they don't. I mean, considering the mess that the schedules generally are the first couple weeks, you'd think the district would let them preview. I don't know, perhaps they do. I'm not sure what access they have nowadays with the online grading and such. (I think they have a way to preview, but that's assuming the schedules were ready. Considering how bad they are, I think they weren't ready very early.)
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