Tough decisions from Year 1:
"Since I started being an educator, I've made thousands of decisions, and several of them have been hard. When I read this prompt, the first thing that came to mind was making decisions while submitting final grades last year. I had several students failing my class, and some I felt didn't deserve to fail. I blamed a lot of it on my inability to teach. "Of course they failed these tests," I thought. "They probably had no idea what was going on while I was miserably failing at trying to teach the material." I didn't do a good job of showing them HOW to answer questions. I just blabbed, gave out worksheets, and graded them. I sought advice from my mentor. She said, "don't pass any student who you think will fail the state test." I had about 30 kids failing my class, which was far too many compared to teachers around me, or so I thought. I sat down and looked at the borderline grades and decided to curve certain exams. I got my number of failing students down to 15. When I started the school year, I got the report of who failed and who passed the state test. I was devastated - almost every student whose grade I padded failed the test. This means that this year they're in Human A and P or another science class that will not properly prepare them to retake the state test. If I could make this decision again, I would have left the grades alone. Now I understand why it's so important that these kids fail. It's beneficial to them in the long run - they get another year of instruction in Biology I that will get them ready to pass the exam so they can graduate. My hope is that this year my instruction will be so much improved so that I won't even have to question the reason a student is failing. I want to be able to see that list of students and know that I did everything I could to help them pass my class AND be prepared for the state test. I want to look at my list of failures and be assured that they won't pass the state test, either, and they will actually benefit from failing my class and retaking it next year. When it's time to make this decision in May, I know now that I will make the right one." |