Bonehead Moves

It has been one heck of a long week. I have never really thought the time change was a big deal. People complain about it and mostly I ignore it. However, this week I think it beat me up a bit. I have survived though!

This week I got my report cards back. Our admin reads them over really carefully. That alone sure made me nervous in the beginning! I was so afraid they would come back to me and say, "Uh, you can't be serious? You call these report cards?!" They have always been very kind and encouraging. That has given me a big boost and helped me feel much more confident about writing.

I don't care what any teacher says. I have never seen a school with report cards like ours. It isn't the report cards themselves - but the comments that are the most work. We write a page, usually 4 or 5 or sometimes 6 paragraphs for each child. They are quite detailed and unique to teach child. They are a lot of work. The more I do them though, the more I see the value. And, the more I do them, I think the better I get at them (although, maybe I should ask my admin if that is their perspective!)

One thing is for sure though. The more I do them, the more I don't mind doing them. I like being able to tie some things up. My teaching life is often scattered in many different directions and report cards are a good time to bring it all together and sift through all the comments and thoughts and grades and boil everything down to something of substance. The other thing is, I kind of enjoy doing the writing. Crazy. I know. It has been a great learning experience for me. It makes me want to write more!

However, this time I did a real bone head move. I finished my home room comments and printed them and handed them in. I then started in on the final editing of my math comments. Somehow I saved my math comments over top of my homeroom comments. Translation: The 20 pages of homeroom comments were suddenly gone. Poof! Just like that! Luckily I had a printed version. And even luckier I have an amazing AP who worked tirelessly to help find a way to retrieve them. Did you know there is a function that allows you to go back to a previously saved version of a document? There is! But we don't have that function. LOL Somehow though, she got most of it back electronically and I didn't end up having to do some editing. Phew!!

From now on, I will always save save save....oh, and print print print.

What a week!