Report Cards

Yes, it was report card time again. Report cards. The name makes me shudder, but at 7 or 8 years old, it just doesn't have the same effect on my students as it does on me... or their parents, for that matter. Report cards. Ostensibly, it's an assessment of how a child is doing in a particular subject as well as overall. Some day these report cards will tell us how they rank in their class-- but for this post, I'm not going there...

I work hard to be an impartial judge of my students' progress but it's also important to me that they are successful. I don't grade all the work we do in the classroom because most of what we do is learning a concept and then we test it. For most kids that means that we'll write some, we'll move our bodies for some things, we'll use manipulatives for learn other things but those things aren't graded by me. That's the process. The written assessment is usually that piece that I grade and put in the grade book. If that assessment doesn't line up with what they were doing with manipulatives, then I know we have a gap between our 3D learning and shifting into 2D learning, ie. "the grade". I let them make up work that is below a 70-- no that's not true, I MAKE them make up work that's lower than a 70 after I give them a mini-lesson on whatever it is that they missed. Learning is mandatory in my classroom and it absolutely drives me nuts when kids tell me, "No, I don't want to do it over. I'll take the 10." Then I have to launch into my whole "You are not here to visit with your friends and have fun... " speech. But I'm digressing (are you surprised?).

Report cards are usually stuffed quickly into their B.E.E. folders two minutes before we are supposed to be walking out the door. I usually have no comment except a yelled,"Bring these back tomorrow-- signed!" as we are rushing out the door. But this 6 weeks, grades were significantly lower and I wanted my students to understand that THEIR actions are what gets them their grades. Kids at this age don't get that. They think I just dream up a grade for them. So I showed them where they were supposed to look to find the grades for this 6 weeks and which subject came first and I walked them through the whole report card as a group but I could see that they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. So I asked the question that usually leaves then speechless, "Does anyone have any questions?" But this time, they did have questions! Weird!

"So, Ms. Klein, what are my grades?" "Okay, come up here." I had her sit next to me on the rocking chair and I pointed to each subject and read the grade and if it was low, I explained what she had been doing (or not doing) that got her the grade. We also have letter codes on the report cards for comments we make for each student. "A" means you get extra reading help. "B" means you get extra math help. "C" means you follow directions, etc all the way down to "U" which means "A pleasure to have in class." I'm trying to speak privately to this student about her grades but my students are strangely attentive and you couldn't hear a pin drop. I tell her what an "A" means and what a "B" means and that a "M" means Needs to practice self-control and that she needs to talk less and think about her work more and then I say "And this "U" means that I am happy you are in my class. Got it?". She nods and smiles and returns to the carpet. Well, now, everybody's hand is up and so I call the next student and the one after and the one after, but I start to worry. They are strangely quiet and that is just not my class. It's not my class when I am being evaluated and the assistant principal is sitting in there. It's not my class when the principal comes in to talk to me about something. IT'S NOT NORMAL BEHAVIOR for them! Then I worry that maybe they are tryng to figure out who is doing the best, but really, they already know that. They're smart and they figure that out within the first few days of school and that has nothing to do with the preternatural quiet that is in my room as I speak to each one. I continue talking to the child sitting next to me on the rocking chair with my mind ranging around for the possible reasons for this quiet. I hear my voice saying "And this "U" means that I am happy you are in my class." Again... for the 8th time.... Because I put that "U" on all of my student's report cards. I hear it then. It's a faint, imperceptible sound of a sigh of released air. I call up the next student and when I get to the "U", there it is again. Ahhh, I think to myself, they just want to know that I'm happy they are in my class.... The next student comes up and I go a little quicker through the grades because now I know really why they want to sit next to me on the rocking chair. They just want to know, in one more way, that I do love them. That doesn't mean that I don't take the time to point out that this one's talking too much or that one is racing through their work or this one needs to double check their work for completion, but I linger on the "U" and I look them in their eyes so they know it's true. When everyone was finished with their trip to the rocker, they just spontaneously turned and hugged each other!

Of course, we were late for the buses that day and Alan wasn't happy. But it was worth it. I know that they went home and told their parents that, "Ms. Klein told me that I am talking too much and I have to focus on my work more but she's really happy that I'm in her class..."

And I am.