Halfway Through the Year

Sorry, I have not updated my blog lately. It's been a little crazy with the end of term. Next week we start a new semester with 200 new students. I have to learn names all over again. Meanwhile, last semester's kids keep emailing, begging me to raise their grade. Does this seriously work on some teachers? I'm sorry, the deadline for late work and extra credit projects was last Monday. I was nice enough to accept a few items the next day, but enough is enough. One kid was promised a car if he got a 4.0. He took up about an hour of my time today, at least. I even excused one assignment for him. But that only brought him up to an 90% A-. I finally told him that was the grade he had earned in a final tone of voice, so he finally said okay and left. So, then I entered in the last two assignments that were in the in file - one of which was a 5 point assignment from a few weeks ago. How hard is it to write a paragraph giving your opinion on who should win a supreme court case...especially when I gave them the answer and then let them add to their answer...yeah. He tried to BS some crap. He wrote, " I think" which is barely legible and then wrote a bunch of squiggly lines to make it look like half a page. These aren't nonsense words, not even words, just squiggles, like he was adding waves on an elementary school drawing of water...I kept the paper, you know, in case his parents want to see it. Worse case of BS I have ever seen, and I have seen people try to get by with a lot. See, I'm one of those strange teachers that actually READS the answers when I grade. Anyway, losing that 5 points cost him a percentage point...so now he has a B+. Then this afternoon I got two emails from him, wanting to know why his grade slipped, and telling me how he had convinced his parents he still deserved a car with an A-, and then again begging me to let him do an alternate assignment so he can get that A- that was so repulsive to him this morning. Yeah, because I have nothing better to do than create an assignment and then grade it just because he put in a B+ effort all term and that was the grade he received. Did I mention that this kid got that B+ by doing an extra credit project? So, really, he would be more like 39 points out of 250 away from an A-, if I hadn't already helped him out. I have done all I can that is fair for this kid. Truth is, you mess around in class, you don't get an A! Period.

So, two classes down, three more + my IB class left to grade. And I am SOO behind in grading that IB class. I have a journal and two essays for each student to correct.