The Celts Again - Solstice Is Near
There has been a lot of school-related tension around here lately.
One college son is afraid he may have to change his plans for a major because he got in over his head in a required math course. Of course, he says with his usual equanimity, if the math is a problem at this stage, then the school is doing him a favor by letting him know.
The other college son was feeling really good as his grades rolled in, day by day, until disaster struck this morning in the form of a grade much lower than anticipated. A few frantic hours, emails, and phone calls later, he had discovered that he had completely misunderstood the expectations for the last week of the class, thereby unwittingly blowing three months of outstanding work.
My daughter says she has checked her email "500 times" today for grades that have yet to arrive. She has absolutely no idea how she has done in at least three of her six classes, so her apprehension is real.
And I've turned in all my grades and comments for my students, and given all kinds of extra opportunties to high school freshmen who made the same kinds of errors in understanding that my college freshman son did, and withstood angry students insisting that they could not possibly deserve the grade that they earned.
I miss the preschool-through-8th-grade years that my children spent in a Montessori school that did not issue grades. Could anything possibly be worth the angst around here?
Walked: 3 miles.
4 comments:
Even though we aren't at Montesorri schools. There aren't grades for K-5 in our school system. There are meets requirements, needs improvement, and working on it - or something like that.
I am not looking forward to this stage
If there's a better way to quantify understanding of subject material, I don't think we've figured it out. If the absence of a comprehensive grading system is what has produced this generation of thirty-somethings that cannot write, spell, or commit a thought to paper in a cohesive way, then we really do have to come up with something else. Lisa :-]
But we do have a comprehensive grading system. That's what's making everyone in my family -- the kids who get the grades and the mom who gives them -- completely nuts.
Oh I hope you can all have some time off to relax from this kind of stress. I really dread having to go through all that with my kids. Pamela
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