GradeQuickSlow - A Sample of True In-School Correspondence, Offered without Commentary or Footnotes for non-Pedagogues

Dear Principal,

I know you always like to hear commentary, so here’s mine while I’m entering grades: GradeQuick seems to me to be Stone Age tech. I know we’ve got lots of technological (and other) needs, and I may be the only one who feels this way, but whenever I use it I feel stymied by a myriad of niggling inconveniences over and over again. If the question of “should we renew?” or “what do people think?” comes up, my answers are “no,” and “arrrgh.”

One quick illustration: even with GradeBook to GradeBook Copy (which is strangely inactive this year - finally sent our tech guy an inquiry today), there is no way to make commonsense changes (such adding tests, grade markings, or grade footnotes) just once. Always you have to make it to one of the four gradebooks, and then copy it.

I was driven off the deep end tonight by the effort to delete the Mean from my reports. I found an old e-mail that answered that question, but other programs (not grading programs – I have, alas, no alternate experience other than my wonderful old Excel spreadsheets: beautifully flexible, endlessly adventurous (i.e., always open to catastropic, unnoticed changes)), seem so much more intuitive and easy to grasp, unlike this sentence. Perhaps I just have more regular and long-lasting experience with them, but after two years and a bit, I still don’t like GradeQuick.

Thanks for listening to the vent,

J.

Computers our Saviors

I can't wait until the time when all my student work comes to me via computer, and the moment it's graded is the moment it's entered into the gradebook and returned to the student. As an English teacher, however, I'm going to require the ability to write easily on a screen, for there is nothing at all smooth or naturalistic about the few editing systems I have tried. This observation is occasioned by my effort right now to enter a few hundred papers into the grade book, in a completely haphazard and disorganized manner. The "Final Grade" column looks like the scene of a massacre right now, with victims either dead or holding their bowels in. It'll clean up eventually, though, as I get through the sadly disordered pile. The good students' work will be in there, and will be recorded accordingly, and the poor students' work will be generally missing, with a few exceptions, and grades will come out to be what we thought they'd be all along, with, again, a few exceptions.

Of course, when it comes, if it comes, this technology will not save me. A long-ago graphic from Time Magazine survives in my brain, of a soldier laden with modern weaponry. Bullets and guns are certainly more powerful and apparently much lighter than the old wood and iron monsters of ages past, but this has not decreased the soldier's load, for now that each newer and lighter bullet does the work of however many heavier and older projectiles, his superiors simply multiply the number of bullets (and other improved items) he is expected to carry, bringing him just up to the point of collapsing under the weight, where all his predecessors marched before him. In the same way, the faster I am able to dispose of my duties, whatever they may be, the faster the expectations will be loaded on my back, and on I will trudge as before.

I teach a class, a workshop for writers, that fairly enrages me. Rage is a bit of an overstatement, but it certainly annoys me and tires me out. The cause of the aggravation is, I think, more systematic than student-based, but the students are hardly blameless. It's just that the current systems within which this class is organized do not protect against typical vices of adolescent scholars: laziness, silliness, lack of forethought, and, sometimes, put-on cynicism.

One of the elements of problem is that this is a wholly new kind of class: two years ago the school had a long lunch period, when students could do as they pleased. Last year students had a class during the second half of that lunch period, but it was not graded and attendance was apparently semi-optional. This year, non-seniors have the same classes, but graded. They are having trouble adjusting to the knowledge that these classes affect their GPA's (they are rather grade conscious - but not enough, as we shall see). Another issue is that the class only takes place three days a week (probably the same as last year), which means that twice a week they are totally free. Inserting themselves into study on an intermittent basis is, I think, difficult for them.

More problematic than the evolution from a different kind of class, which can't be helped if the change is worth making, is that lunch period is often used to find time for other tasks. The most problematic of these is the college speakers. Rather than having a college fair, when all the speakers come on one day and set up their booths, my school invites them piecemeal, and asks in the Juniors (whom I teach in this class) and Seniors to listen to those that interest them. This is fine, but it provides an excuse for students to be late to class. I cannot mark them tardy to encourage them, and so they show up when they are done. It is hard to keep tabs on exactly when "when they are done" becomes "when they feel like it," because college speakers are notoriously late, and sometimes do not show up until the beginning of the class I teach.

Hot lunches, a special event that occurs once or twice a week, are also problems, as they do not always run on time either, depending on exactly when the Taco Bell or pizza is ready. Sometimes the younger students get fed first, sometimes the older, so one never knows whether one's class is legitimately late or not. As they trickle in, either from college speakers or hot lunches, it is hard to get them sitting down and working, as much of the work they do requires trading papers with people who are not yet there.

There are more problems, something of my own making, but I'll save those for later.