First Quarter Ends

It's the end of first quarter! I stayed at the school until 7:30 to get done. I finally got all the grades and comments in. That should mean that I don’t have to work on Friday. Thursday is Veteran’s Day so I have that off. It was hard getting done. I tried to put at least one comment for each student but for a few average students I just didn’t have very much to say. Of course, you can never say what you really want to. “Your child is really obnoxious and it’s a result of bad parenting.”
I had about ten students fail. Rodney was one of them. He wasn’t even close. I know I’m going to be hearing from his parents but what can you do? I give all my students a participation grade. Most students get all ten of the points and that can bring them up a whole letter grade. Every time they cause so much trouble that they are sent out of the room I deduct one of the points. Rodney managed to whittle his way down to three points. He would have been lower but I’ve stopped sending him out because he seems to think it’s a reward. Rodney’s quarter average was around 30%. Most of that is for stupid stuff—earning zeros on quizzes and tests for talking, not following directions, tearing all the pages out of his notebook right before the notebook check etc. His parents have already asked for a conference. I’m not looking forward to it.