grade a.

report card marks were due this past week.

it was a particularly hard week for me, having just returned from south padre island, struggling with the monday blues and having to be a marking machine to get all my marks in on time. i am not a last-minute lisa, but i am definitely NOT someone who has my marks entered weeks in advance. i would say, for my first go around, it wasn't an entirely awful experience.

i find that marks can be a really difficult thing. often, you just have a gut feeling, and with those children it is not difficult to decide whether they are at grade level or not. but with many of my students i am facing a myriad of factors that influence my grading. everything from how they behaved that week to my personal feelings toward their work. i find assessment to be the area i am least secure in, particularly as a first year teacher. what if i am being harder on my kids then the other second grade teachers? what if i am being easier? do i give out 'exceeds expectations' in trimester one, or do i remain stingy with them and save them for later in the year? how low do i have to go to scare parents into understanding the reality for their children? and lastly, how much do all these marks really matter to an eight year old in the grand scheme of life? some of my kids are actually being told that getting an 'approaching grade level' is bad. at 8 years old, they are already dead-set on straight m's. i don't want marks to be the focus of my classroom, but i also need something to use as leverage for good performance!

we gave each child over 30 marks. and that was just from their homeroom teacher.

i tell my kids that giving their best effort is the most important step in school. but what do i do when their best effort is still underachieving? and then they go home and get criticized? these are issues i struggle with every day.

this week we have two afternoons off for parent-teacher conferences. i am looking forward to them, because i feel that i can better articulate their child's progress in words then with letters on a page. but as a busy weekend draws to a close, i am realizing i have a lot of work to do to get myself ready for two very intense afternoons. many of these parents consider teachers experts on all aspects of child development, so i want to make sure that i am prepared and can make well-informed comments. there's always more work to be done.

except, hanging on the horizon is our week-long november break for american thanksgiving. five more days of school and then i am off to mazatlan for a week of language school, beaching and not thinking about school.

countdown begins.