The Gradebook

In my current position as instructional coach, I don't regularly use a gradebook.  Our school system uses Pinnacle, at least for the rest of this school year.  I train teachers on how to use the program even though I never actually used it for a class until last year.  Previously, when I was teaching in the classroom, we used Gradequick.  Both programs have their qualities.  Both definitely have their problems.

For all of you that are out there complaining about whatever gradebook program that you have now, let me take you back.  For some of you this will be no problem; for others, what I am about to tell you is not fiction. It is the world in which we as teachers had to live.

Next week, the first level of informing parents of grades will commence - the interim.  We will remind the teachers to have their grades in Pinnacle by a date and time.  From there the interim will be produced with almost no human intervention.

I will skip past the first three years of my teaching, because I will have to admit that an elementary physical education teacher's hardest task of grading is that he/she needs to post grades for all of the students in the building.  I remember in my first year that was about 430 students. And I had to wait for the classroom teachers to bring the sheets to me to add my grades.   But there were no papers to grade either.

So, imagine this.  I was a first year English teacher.  I had over 120 students in the school day.  Okay, okay, I know that current teachers in FWCS have 180 students.  You win with sheer numbers.  But contemplate this,  when I entered grades in the gradebook then, it was a thin folder-like book filled with spreadsheets.  After you graded student work, you entered it on the column that you indicated for that work.  I know, I know, some of you still do this as a backup.  I still don't know why.

In this time machine we would see that I entered all of my grades by the time interims arrived.  Then I calculated the students' current grade with what - a computer, a calculator?   No!!!  Simple division, conversion to a percentage, and then a grade that had been established for that percentage on the grade scale.  These interims came in the hands of the students.  They were on triplicate form NCR paper.  In each class you were required to fill out the form and initial it, not to mention write any notes that you wanted to relay to a parent.  At the end of the day, the teacher was required to take off one copy of the form and send home to the parent.  How you may ask?  In the hands of the student.  Then the teacher took the rest of the forms, alphabetized them, and sent them to the office

Don't let anyone fool you.  They will tell you that we didn't have a computer in those days for the final grades. There was a computer - one.  It was for all of the grades, of all of the teachers, from all of the schools.  We used number two pencils and filled in a seemingly endless number of bubbles in order to make sure each student had their first nine week, second nine weeks, and semester grades.  You could also bubble in for comments and final exam grades.

I will never say that today's teacher has it better.  I feel their pain every day, but I also want to give credit to all those colleagues with whom I sat for hours on end filling out bubble sheets just to get the grades in.  And I have to admit, more than once I was tempted, just like our students, to see what kind of pattern I could come up with by placing the bubbles strategically.  Just tempted; I didn't do it.