I have had the tech coach project from you-know-where.
About two months ago - I can't tell you exactly when because this semester has been strange like the weather - an assistant principal, Ms. M, walked up to me and said, "I need you for a project." Many of the teachers in our school have used a free online gradebook program for several years. Last year the principal at the time, Mr. H, began requiring all teachers to use it, and earlier this year, Coach B, our graduation coach, wanted us to use it as a school so that he could have access to the students' grades to help those who were in trouble.
The powers-that-be of the online gradebook contacted Ms. M and said, "Your school is killing us!"
It seems that their online roster for our school was about 5500 students long. We had 1061 enrolled. We have about 90 teachers, give or take a couple, and few of them were using the preferred method of using the student ID number as the ID number in the program. I myself didn't use that method last year, but this year I started using it because I discovered that my numbers were the same as some of the other teachers and kids were getting grades for other students!!! The problem with this is that some students had seven or eight ID numbers in the roster. Some only had one or two. Ideally, we could've started this over the summer but that didn't work for the gradebook people. They wanted us to go in and do it for the 4th grading period. The cut off for the 3rd grading period came after spring break. I had to get access to become an admin on the account, then, because some teachers couldn't wait to get their grades in (meanwhile I haven't got ANY in there, a fact I need to remedy before Tuesday), instead of deleting everybody in the program... well, let's just say this. It's a project and I'm learning as I go. It's going faster now but I'm still having to go student-by-student through the 3000 or so names that are in there to merge files.
I just told the teachers how to create their rosters (it wasn't the way I had done it in the past); then I went in and deleted students that I knew had graduated or at least not attended this school year; then I went in and merged files for students by changing their ID numbers. The roster still didn't look right. THIS weekend I learned a trick I wish I'd known at first - I could delete every grading period prior to this year and that would make weeding out the data a lot easier. Now the roster only has about 3000 names which is nice. We still don't have all the teachers on the school site (I predict I'll be teaching this at the first-day-back-before-we-get-students inservice, IF I'm still teaching at that point - I don't know why I wouldn't be, but my life's been so uncertain these last few years, I don't want to assume too much!) but honestly, that is not hurting matters for me right now. I worked about 20 hours in two days doing all this stuff. AND teaching too. AND fixing minor computer issues. AND planning a blood drive.
I also worked on mopping up the grading program issues this weekend. Hopefully tomorrow night I can get all my grades in, and then I won't feel so bad working on the computer stuff.
I have another class too and I've really dropped the ball in it. I've changed my mind on my topic for research three times. I have two weeks to do the research AND write the paper. It does not look good. The good news is that I've done everything else in the course on time, I think, and the prof likes my work, and I think I know what I'm doing now, and... well, that is another class, and not really related to this blog. Ahem.
Let's see... without my log in front of me I can't remember what else I did this week... the gradebook program project has certainly kept me busy, but I had a couple of other issues.
Oh! I remember. I installed Flash on two laptops for Ms. T on the opposite end of the building, tried to fix a corrupted Publisher file for Ms. A.M. on our side of the building... did Ms. W need anything this week? She always needs something, but she got me the week before mostly. I can't think of anything else but I wrote down what I did. Seems like I had to install some programs for Mr. W but that may have been last week, too.
AND... last but not least... I had an observation sometime in the last week or so. I did so-so. I have two or three more. I HATE this new observation/evaluation process.
What made me think I could handle grad school, teaching full-time, attempting (and failing) to run a household well (fortunately, my husband is VERY understanding), typing transcription part-time, being good to my nearly-grown kids, my husband, and my parents, and being active in my church? I don't know. And, one of the cats ran away. I promise, I do feed and water them. The scary part is, I'm actually considering going on to get my doctorate. Am I crazy??? Believe it or not, I'm NOT planning to take any classes in the summer this year. I've got other plans in the works... but again, I digress.
This'll be a short week and THANK GOD. I have never appreciated Good Friday so much...
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