Have I Got a Deal For You!

I love the last week of a grading period. That's the time of year when forlorn little seventh graders come sidling up to their teachers begging, pleading, and in some cases demanding, extra credit in order to bring their grades up to a passing level.

I hate to tell them this, but no amount of extra credit is really going to save most of them. I mean when you have a 43% and 70% is passing....it just doesn't compute.

However.

Because I like to have fun, I put a note on the PowerPoint agenda that is broadcast on the Big Huge Screen in my room for the first nine minutes of class (four minutes in between class periods, and another five once the bell has run.) The note said "Today Only - turn in Twenty Reward Tickets and earn 10 points of extra credit!"

Now from the very first day of school one of the things I tell my students is that they Need To Read the PowerPoint When They Walk Into Class...this slideshow tells them what our standards are, what we're doing, what's due, any messages I need to get to them, plus a daily quote and a science trivia. And, of course, every day I have some knucklehead asking me "What are we doing today?" when it's sliding by them on a Big Huge Screen in full color.

Any guesses on how many kids actually read the message about the extra credit and took advantage of it?

Out of 97 kids?

One.

As my grandmother would have said, "if it had been a snake, it would have bit 'em!"

When Reality Smacks You Upside the Head

Friday will be the last day of our first nine-week grading period.

(It will also be the last day before our week-long fall break and those of us teaching seventh grade this year are nearly besides ourselves with glee, but I digress.)

This is the time of the grading period where we'll see some of the little cherubs who have done absolutely freaking nothing but suck in oxygen all quarter become a bit concerned.

One girl in my notorious Fifth Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself, Softball Girl, who has a a whopping 50% in my class, came up to me on Tuesday with a printout from our PowerSchool grade program. Someone (Mom perhaps?) had gone over all the missing assignments with a highlighter. (On an aside, one reason I like this program is that when you give a kid a zero for an assignment, you can also code it as missing if it wasn't turned in.) There were about 15 missing assignments. "Can I make these up?" she asked. Normally I don't accept late work, but hey if she wants to spend all night making up fifteen assignments, I'll give her partial credit.

"Sure," I said. "Do you have them all written down in your agenda?"

She nods her head in the affirmative.

"Then go for it," I say. Any bets on if I'll see any of it.

Anyone? Someone?

They have been crawling out of the woodwork, asking for extra credit, wanting to turn in late work, wondering if there was a way to turn that 43% into a passing 70% (ah, no, there really isn't).

This absolutely slays me. Every three weeks we send out progress reports. Kids have their own PowerSchool passwords and can get on line and monitor their own progress daily if they so desire. If they don't have internet at home, I'll print out a progress report (and my new favorite report, the missing assignment report - that scares them a bit when they see it all listed there in black and white). In short, there's no way on this earth they don't realize that they're digging, digging, digging a hole. They're just busy finding ways to stay off task.

Until, of course, it finally dawns on them (after hearing us go on and on and on and on about it) that Report Cards Are Coming Out Soon and I'm Going to Get Grounded!

The good news is that, usually, a lot of these kids wake up from their seventh grade beginning of the year coma and actually kick it up a notch.

Usually. With this group, however, I'm not placing any bets.

I'm just hoping they mature a bit over fall break.

Yeah, right...