Thursday, March 29, 2007

Grumpy pants

This will be my last tirade about the 9-weeks test - promise. A little back story...

We (as a department) take turns making up the tests for the end of each quarter. Tom and I took the 2nd nine weeks, and did the test for it. Not a problem. Leah (another Earth Science teacher) did the test for the first nine weeks. Our illustrious dept. head, Lenny, should have done the 3rd test. He did not want to. (lip poked out, and shaking his head). So, Tom volunteered to do it again. What did he do? He gave me the released items from last years test to 'look over.' I took them home a few weekends ago, and marked some I thought should be included in addition to those Tom had marked. On Monday (a week ago) Lenny comes to Tom and says, "The office needs that test today!" So, I spent last Monday cutting and pasting questions, answers, and graphics for the test, and putting it all together in a usable form. Gave it to Tom, who gave it to Lenny, who gave it to the office to be copied. Neither one of them checked behind me. I made some mistakes on the test. Stupid, fixable mistakes - but mistakes, nonetheless.

After the test was copied, THEN Tom looks at it. He freaks out over the mistakes. Lenny says - don't worry, we'll just fix the problems. I apologize to Lenny, who tells me he blames Tom for not following through and authoring the test. Tom blames Lenny for passing the buck, and not authoring the test.

Fast forward to today. The kids took the flawed test yesterday. Lenny is going over the test with his class (I'm in there as a collaborating teacher), and as he goes through it, he decides he doesn't like a couple of the questions. Says those never should have been included. Makes some comments about how bad the test was. I apologize again - he blames Tom again. Tells me that I never should have been put in the position to put the test together, since I'm not the Earth Science expert. (I'm Sped, after all - evidently not just as a vocation, but I'm now part of the population!)

I'm grumpy about this.

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