Kahlua Goes Well with Chai

Our last day of school was Tuesday. It didn't have that happy relief feeling to it that the end of school normally does. Apparently coming out on the backside of covid was much more difficult than actually going through it. It wasn't a terrible year, but it was rough and I don't think I am going to look back on too many parts of it fondly. 

And that was before finding out about the latest school shooting. I've been trying to avoid it as much as I can because I simply don't have the bandwidth for it right now, but that has proved to be impossible. Stupid me went on facebook (why am I still there???) looking for a birthday and waded through a stream of hopelessness that I can't even fathom to be true.

I checked out today. Grades are done and my room is clean. When I got home, there was a living room full of teenagers playing a marathon game of How to Train Your Dragon. Not quite adults still hanging on to something they loved from their not too distant childhood. So I went up to my room and I just cried. Cried that my babies are growing up. Cried that I didn't give my best to this last year's students. Cried that I survived another year without having to protect my students from (or lose my students to) a terrorist.

I live in a rural, red state. People I have known all my life, people I love, people I know to be hard-working and loving and compassionate, posting memes about "not taking my guns" right after professing to be "pro-life." So many calls to provide teacher and teenagers and toddlers with military level training that I just can't believe this is being offered up as a solution. If the only thing you have to offer is arming teachers, bulletproof backpacks, and Kevlar blankets you should just keep your mouth shut. That is some next level victim blaming bullshit and you are part of problem. I am simply stunned that so many people are just...okay...with this. 

I have six years before I can retire. On so many levels, I hope I make it.

The Circle of Grading

This year has been hard. I probably don't need to tell you that. I can't really put a finger on what exactly it is, but I think this has been the hardest stretch since the pandemic began. 

It started to show about halfway through our first trimester. Around October, it became clear that my freshmen just...weren't. They weren't on level. They weren't able to school. They weren't interested. I had been using my standards based grading, and while it seemed to be going okay, it became clear that we were not, for various reasons, going to be able to cover near as much material as we had in previous years. This was a problem for my grading because I really rely on circling back around to earlier concepts so that relearning and retakes are built into the later assessments. 

I always tend to have lower grades in my classes. Taking out homework and extra credit and only relying on what the kids know will do that. I have always been okay with it. But this year was different. This year a lot my kids just refused to do school. 

As a compromise, I guess, I decided that in the second trimester I would go back to traditional grading and give students credit for work that we do in class. It was simple! Brilliant! Kids will pass!

Except they didn't. The structure of the class was the same as it has been. We do stuff in class, whiteboard the answers, and assess. When the work was complete, I would stamp it and record it as done. They didn't need to have it correct, although we went on and on and on about why we were whiteboarding the answers... They could have copied it from their partner. I didn't care, I was giving them free points. I was giving them a cushion so they didn't have to actually know ALL the physics. 

Wanna guess what changed? Absolutely nothing. In fact, grades are WORSE than they were first tri with the added bonus of the rush of "can I still turn this in for credit" panic this last week of the grading period. 

Today was the last day (thank goodness for winter storms) so I have the next few days to think about what to do going into this last part of the year. I'm leaning back towards SBG. I am modifying the computational part of my plans, so I think I can get back to a more realistic pace and be able to circle back around and re-emphasize the important points.