Freedom!

Yesterday, at 1:53 PM, I felt the most amazing, incredible, wonderful sense of relief.  It washed over me, taking (almost) every bit of stress out of my body.  It wasn't until about 15 minutes later, getting out of the elevator at Howard's office, that I felt the sense of freedom that the end of the quarter brings.  I had a huge, goofy grin on my face as the elevator doors opened.

It is difficult to describe this quarter.  As I do every quarter, I change up the information a little bit, present it a little differently, try to change those things that didn't work in previous quarters.  I don't think it was me.  In two of my classes, my students did well.  The ones who didn't pass knew the reasons why, and they know what they need to do to pass next time.  In my other 2 classes (2 sections of the same class), I had the worst results ever.  It's disheartening when out of a total of 36 students, only 10 pass.  But again, I don't think it was me.

The 26 students who didn't pass all had one thing in common: missing work.  There seems to be this sense among students that it's OK to miss work.  I have this feeling that in high school, students were allowed to make up work at the end of the term in order to bring up their grades, which gave them a false sense of how the world actually works.  In real life, you don't get do-overs every time you screw up or forget to do something.  Sometimes, forgetting or blowing something off has real, definite, and serious consequences.  So, too, in my class. I allow late work - students have basically 2 weeks to get every assignment turned in.  So why is it so difficult to get it done?

The questions will remain - I don't know why the students do what they do and don't do what they should.  All I know is that I'm free today, and I feel good!