January 3, 2012
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The Daily News1 Welcome back! It's 2012.
2 That's mind-boggling.
3 It's funny, because to me, it's the middle of the year, not the end.
4 The end of the year for me is when summer begins.
5 My daughter Nicoley taught me that one.
6 New Years is officially becoming the most stressful time of the year, because our semester grades are due within two days of our return to work.
7 As much as I enjoyed the holidays, THAT was a gargoyle that I began battling somewhere around September.
8 We used to have the semester end two weeks after the holidays, which is naturally much more stressful for the students.
9 And, if I may, school is supposed to be for the students.
10 But I found this year's "holiday" to have been the educational equivalent of a climb up Mount Everest.
11 I personally never gave homework over the holidays, the idea being that students deserve a break, and that education should focus on friends and family during the season.
12 Well, it did. But some teachers STILL gave monumental homework, even though the semester ended on December 16. I gave none over the holidays. Never did, never will. My message has always been that of friends and family during the holidays.
13 My goal was to have all my grades done by December 16 so that I could enjoy my friends and family as well.
14 <basketball buzzer>.
15 I gave written finals, so I had to do reading and grading of literally thousands of papers, as well as organizing and keeping track of every single student's work. Emails came in insisting that students had done work that they clearly hadn't done. I went on several wild-goose chases only to find that the student looked through his binder and found the work that I had "lost".
16 I also had college letters of recommendation deadlines, and other almost insurmountable mountains of work. I did get to see a few people, but always had this deadline looming.
17 I think I turned the corner on it all finally last night, but I'm still not sure. The day before New Year's Eve I was in a blistering wilderness looking at what felt like Everest all around me. I felt the size of a pebble. I felt that I was in a blizzard on a steep mountain.
18 I almost had to cut off a family New Years because of it. I had to cut my visit one day short, and still had what felt like hundreds of individual crises from students.
19 Most of it was, "I turned that in!" followed by a fruitless search for a paper that the student a) never did, b) didn't do but lied that they did, or c) did but later found in their binder, or in their shoe, or in their drawers.
20 I had students who all sit together in a corner of the same class claiming that I had lost four or five of their assignments. Uh...no? Have you ever heard of "academic integrity"?
21 Here's my system, for those of you who are still listening. When an assignment comes in, I stamp it, and then I collect it in an enormous storage tub. As the students exit, I take the papers, immediately alphabetize them, and then I staple them together so that no papers disappear.
22 The stamp means it was on time. It is practically foolproof. Sometimes I don't grade them immediately, but they rarely travel out of the room. I take small stacks at a time and grade them at home. I usually grade them immediately, but sometimes I wait a day or two. Long papers I put aside so that I could keep my gradebook current.
23 And yet I have students writing me claiming that I lost two, three, or four of their assignments. I just found that three of the guys who do that sit right next to each other in the same class.
24 Hmmmm.
25 But when I look alphabetically through an assignment, I can usually tell when a student hasn't done the work. Very rarely will something be overlooked, and that might be once. Two assignments missing is nearly impossible, and three or four is a huge "coincidence".
26 I wasn't born yesterday.
27 And yet I still try to give each and every student the benefit of the doubt, especially seniors.
28 I spent an extraordinary amount of time looking for papers that probably were never done, just because I trust a lot of my students.
29 Interesting that it never happens to straight A students.
30 But I had almost too many students telling me they did things, only to find that they never turned things in, or that they failed to put their names on their work.
31 One student turned in about six assignments on the the day we were leaving. All six had been stamped. I called him on it the day before, and it turned out that all six were stamped, with the proper dates on them. He said he was embarrassed and that he didn't want to turn them in.
32 Huh?
33 Anyway, it has been a blizzard, and a definite climb to through the blinding trails of Everest.
34 I'll let you know when it settles, and when I finally get back to the base camp. I'm almost there, but it's still not quite finished.
35 When I finally step my foot on base camp, I'll think to myself, "Happy New Half-Year!"
36 Wake me up when the Springtime ends.
37 AnywayZ, it's great to be back. There's something nice about returning to normal.
38 I should be okay in a week or two.
39 Meanwhile, Happy New Year, and let's make this a good one.
40 Peace, and Season's Greetings from Everest.
~H~
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