It's Exhausting

End of Quarter 3 looms largely in the distance and I'm pooped. I'm so tired of trying to keep my students' motivation up. Remind me why I signed up for this gig?

We were told by our department chair that our school goal was to have less than 12.149238759%, or some other such stupid percentage, D's and E's (F's for you old school people like me who miss the "F" as a grade!). Ok. So, looking at my classes I can have no more than 2 kids per class who have a D or an E.

Here's the kicker. If the kid gets a D or E, there's a mountain of paper work to fill out to "prove" that you've done what you needed to do to get the kid to a passing grade. Oye vey! I'm pooped.

When did the sole responsibility of a kid's grades rest on my tired shoulders? Seriously?

So, every week I've been going over and over my class grades, crossing my fingers that I have less than 2 kids per class that have D's or E's. Predictably, the D's and E's I do have are always from the same kids. I've done everything I can think of to help these kids besides stand on my head and they're still not "succeeding" according to the parameters we've been given.

I take a little bit of a different view, however. Two of my most troublesome students grade-wise have boosted their percentages from between 10 and 30 percent since their hitting their all-time lowest scores. D's and E's don't show that progress. The report card also won't reflect that progress and it annoys me to no end.

I am also trying to be the cheerleader extraordinaire for my other students. I have many students playing tight-rope walker with their grades. They're sitting so close to a low C that one lousy test will send them tumbling into the D range and not only affect their GPA, but totally skew my percentages! Argh!

Why did I sign up for this job, then? Because, honestly, nothing makes me happier than to see the kid that had 35% at his lowest earn a 55%; even if it means I had to prod him the whole way. It makes my day to see a kid's view of themselves as a learner make a turn for the positive when they see their current grade and realize that all the "rah-rah-rah's" I've been doing the past 9 weeks are really working. That if they trust the process, put some effort and work into it, they can accomplish it.

Now, if we could just get rid of the 12.35440584098% or below crapola, I'd be exhausted, but so much happier!