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Friday, January 15, 2010

Is the Quarter Over Yet?


The grading quarter, that is. If yesterday's pleas for extra assignments, points for boxes of tissues, and a whole quarter's worth of instruction in one afternoon weren't enough, today I get this....

In my second period class a student comes over to me and asks if I received a whole bunch of late work she had done. It was in my mailbox, she tells me. She had given it to the main office secretary one day after school and asked her to put it in my mailbox, but this was a long time ago she explains.

I recall no such thing. Oh brother.

I decided to send her to the main office to see if the secretary still had it by chance. I get a phone call in my classroom minutes later from the main office secretary. SHE explains that she may have placed it in the wrong mailbox, and will check with some of the other teachers. But, she adds, sometimes if things get put in the wrong mailbox teachers will just place the item(s) on the counter in the mail room and she (the secretary) then comes by and puts those things in the recycling bins.

Oh. Swell.

So it's Friday, exams and the end of the quarter are next week, and this child has done a bunch of work that I now have no evidence of or any basis for giving her a grade. Panicked, she asks me what we're going to do?!?! So, I said, if the work does not turn up I will not make her do it all again because I genuinely believe she has done it. Instead I can excuse her from the assignments meaning they will not contribute points to her grade, but will not count against her grade either as they would if they were outright not handed in.

Can this quarter please end before any other crisis occurs? Thank God next week is only four days, three of which are half days involving nothing but test-giving!!!


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