Slice of Life(This is part of the Slice of Life project at Two Writing Teachers)

We in the midst of our first year transition away from traditional Report Cards into standards-based Progress Reports, which has shifted us away from letter grades and into standards. I am fine with that direction, although I have some concerns about the implementation in our district. It has not really gone all that smooth but I don’t want to get too deep into it here.

My sixth grade team and I do all of our Progress Reports online (Powerteacher) and the rest of our school is on the way. It is rather time-consuming to enter each standard assessment on each line. I’ve worked a few hours on my four classes, for sure. Then, yesterday, a day before the reports are to go home (today!), a colleague noticed a quirk in what is being printed and shot me an email about it. Sure enough, two sections of my ELA reports seem to vanish when the system prints out a report.

OK, so that’s not good. I was emailing the tech folks last night to figure it out and I am hopeful that this will be fixed before the end of today, when we are sending home the reports. That’s just a few hours away. Gulp. I see an email saying they are working on it, so I am pretty hopeful but still, I hate waiting until the last minute to do anything.

Just one more headache in the mix, but luckily, there is some sweetness on tap for today with my students that I will have to write about tomorrow, after the slice happens. I just need to remember to have my camera with me during the day today.

Peace (in progress),
Kevin