Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Nerts

I hate 9-week tests. It's crazy to get so excited over barely passing grades on these things. The first 9-weeks, my students did poorly overall. I think my highest score was a 50-something. My department chair told me not to worry - these were Sped kids, after all - and as long as they scored over 50%, they had a good chance of passing the SOL at the end of the year. (Tells you something about that SOL, don't it?) So, I felt a little better. Then, my principal did a hall drive-by on me - letting me know that I had to do something to get my test scores up. What did I have to do? Start remediation classes right away in order to help these darlings, and get them to pass the SOL. OK, so my remediation classes started right before Thanksgiving. Every Wednesday morning, for the last 4 months, I've remediated my students for 30 minutes. Now, I'm supposedly going to get paid for this - not sure when, but money has been promised.

Second 9-weeks, my students did a little better. Instead of just about everyone failing the test, only 2 failed. Much better. Were these all the students I remediated? Not a chance. Only 5 were in remediation weekly. The others were in other remediation classes (because they failed more than one 9-week test.) My principal did the dance of joy, and told me to 'keep up the good work.' In other words, keep remediating every Wednesday morning for phantom pay.

Today, my students are taking the 3rd 9-week test. I graded my 2nd period class, and all but one student passed. Then, 8th period. These guys are lazy, and I have 3 girls who are absent more often than present. In this class, I had - guess what? - 3 failures. Meanwhile, Tom is sticking his head in my door, crowing: "One failure out of all my classes!" Like it's some kind of teacher competition....

crazy

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