Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Lost grade sheets! SOL 2013: 20 0f 31

For the month of March we are challenging ourselves to write a slice every day. 

Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth from Two Writing Teachers.  


I wish I could say that looking for lost items is an atypical experience in Room 104.  However, to be totally honest, I must admit that I'm often looking for something I've misplaced.  My students are willing to help me, but today's search occurred after school.  I misplaced the page that recorded two weeks of student slices.  I felt a bit frantic, but knew I had looked at it shortly after lunch, so it had to be  somewhere in the classroom!

I begin sorting other stacks of papers that need my attention in the hopes that the missing grade sheet might magically appear in one of those stacks.   I clear my desk (not really), but I look through everything on my desk, and it isn't there.  A favorite after school strategy is to move stacks of work to student desks to cut down on the clutter on my desk.  So I move over to a student desk to post the Social Studies quiz grades.  DONE! Then I pull the China inquiry notes that need to be scored and add the late papers to the correct classes from the late basket.  DONE!  Then I pull the late papers from last week's SS assignment to add to that grade sheet.  DONE!  My sense of unease continues about this lost page.  I decide to check the front of the classroom - my podium, my stool, and the front cabinet where I sometimes lay things down.  No slicing grade sheet in any of those spots!

So I pick up The Golden Goblet file to work on tomorrow's plans for our class novel. Then I check the box of WRN (Writer's Reader's Notebooks) that I am taking home.  It makes sense that I might have tucked it in that box.  No grade sheet!  My panic rises - this page is the end result of recording slices from WRNs for 18 days in March. Replicating the sheet would require collecting all the notebooks again.  Maybe it is time to call in reinforcements and ask for help.  My son-in-law might be willing to help me look. (Good thing I didn't call - he was watching the BYU/UW basketball game.)  Finally, I decide to abandon hope for today (it's after 6) and go home.  I reach for the group summaries that need timely feedback tonight and find "paper clipped" to the back of one set of summaries . . . you guessed it, the missing grade sheet.  I throw everything into my school bag and head for home.  Another successful search, I just wish it hadn't taken quite so long!

6 comments:

  1. I do this all the time! In fact, my slice yesterday was about this very same thing. Glad you found it!

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  2. Oh, I sooooo remember doing things like that. Once I lost my student book orders at home, and never found them. Ever. Disappeared like they never existed. As a teacher, I think we will have recurring nightmares long into retirement...

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  3. I go CRAZY when I can't find stuff. It happens much too much.

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  4. You know I could identify with this story. I know too well that feeling of panic when something is not where I think it should be. I always have a visual of the item in my mind, it's just the background details that are fuzzy. Glad you found it. Relief!

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  5. All that paper, right? But, I often find that the search process yields other "lost" papers.

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  6. So-o-o glad you found it, Ramona. That is the sorry saga of a teacher's life-drowning in paper. I wish many could read this, to see how hard a teacher works. Leaving after six, ugh!
    Thanks for sharing.

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