Wednesday, September 8, 2010

My least favorite part of teaching.

Paperwork.  Really.  I hate the stuff, and it breeds on my desk at night.

This morning, I got to school at 6:15 am to try to get caught up.  I worked until the kids arrived at 7:40.  I worked through my lunch period.  I worked while the kids were in class (relatively independent work today) and I'm STILL not caught up.  I am, however, less behind.  And I have not been neglecting the paperwork terribly.  It just exploded on my desk and inbox.

Here is a quick rundown on some of the paperwork I need to keep and manage.

1.  Grading.  This one is both necessary and my own fault.  I need to see student work.  How else can I see if the quiet girl really understands or is just busy daydreaming about the cute troublemaker in front of her?  This is where I can interact with student's work, and really see what they've learned.  And it had better be important, if I'm going to take the time to grade it.

1b.  Grade program back-ups.  See #2.  This was the ultimate goal of today's early arrival -- to get current on grading and make a back-up.

2.  Class lists.  I teach in a district with a high rate of transiency.  This means that even though this is the THIRD WEEK of school, in the last two days I have gotten 5 students who did not come before this week.  I had 4 new kids last week.  Today, a student was moved from my seventh period class to my first period class.  The exciting thing about that is that our grades are online, but when a kid is transferred, the grade does not transfer with them, and in fact totally disappears off the computer.  I will need to reenter this student's work into the program, and I did not make a recent back-up (see #1b).  Good thing I haven't handed the work back yet, isn't it?  Even more mysterious, there was a kid today who was somehow totally removed from the system.  I discovered this when calling students up to show them their grades, and I missed the kid.  When he told me, I realized he and his grade had vanished from the computer.  Hopefully, guidance has him sorted out again by tomorrow.  And his grade comes back.

3.  Attendance book.  Technically, I should be taking attendance every day in this fabulous computer program we have.  And I do.  However, the program is often behind reality.  Also, when a kid moves between periods, their attendance data also vanishes.  For this reason, I keep my own attendance record. From a legal standpoint, this is correct.  I should have a paper copy of my attendance records written in my own handwriting.  I don't do it that way.  I keep mine on excel so I can cut and paste and color code as needed.  I refuse to write out a paper copy and have to change it 17 times over the first month.  Keeping up even in excel can be no small task.

4.  Parent call log.  As I teacher, I am expected to call parents frequently.  I call when things are going well.  I call when they're going badly.  I call when the child has missed more than a few class days.  In some districts, there is an attendance secretary to do this for teachers (especially in high school where I have 100+ kids per day), but our school cannot afford that luxury.  And whenever I call a parent, I need to document it.  What number did I call, who did I talk to, what did I say, and did they say?  Because if that parent gets a report card and comes in and yells at the principal that they had no idea their child was failing (or skipping or whatever), I need to be able to prove that I did contact them.  Or at the very least left 5 voicemails for them at a number the school told me was theirs.

5.  Sports grade updates.  Eligibility for high school sports is dependent on grades.  Here in IL, you need to be passing 4 classes to be able to play sports.  (Yes, that standard is as ludicrous as you think it is.  Talk about setting the bar low).  This means that at random intervals (almost never on a consistent day), all of my athletes come running up to me with little cards that I need to write their current grade on at a moment's notice.  Now, I'm all for being pretty up to date on grading, but if we've just taken a quiz or turned in a major project, it may be a few days before I can tell you for sure what your grade looks like.  Plus, having to take class time to look up and fill out grades for 5 students cuts into my teaching time.  It is important, but irritating.

There's other stuff too, but this is what I was doing today.  All of it has a purpose, but it can get pretty overwhelming.  I think I need to go sit in bed and knit.  And try again tomorrow.  Maybe I'll even make it to e-mail tomorrow . . .  Hope springs eternal.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, geez. And I thought my paperwork was bad!! If you're like me, though, what makes it worse is the obnoxious computer glitches that make me redo the work I did. I don't mind doing it once; I really mind having to track whether the computer ate it so I can do it again (and again..). Hang in there, and congratulations on getting a bit caught up!!

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