SCHOOL, SALAD, AND SNOW

I like technology when it works.  Let's be honest, who really likes it when it doesn't work?  (Although I will admit that sometimes when my phone's battery dies and when the cable/landline is out and no one can reach me, it's kind of relaxing and liberating.)

This week at school it is a grade-posting week.  This means that our ancient automated grading program (that is so outdated that the program doesn't even exist on the market anymore) needs to be shared with students and their parents.  It also means that I need to get about 600 grades into the system so I can post and share the recent scores with my classes.

It's my own fault, really.  If I entered grades as I write them into my handy-dandy hard-copy grade book, then these bi-weekly postings wouldn't be so daunting.  But, it's flu season right now.  That means a lot of absenteeism, which also means re-entering and catching up grades of kiddos I missed on the initial grade entry as their make-up work trickles in.  Sometimes it's just easier to leave the whole process until I've filled in all the blanks.

Of course, the Internet took a tumble last week, so no work was getting done for a day or two, anyway.  Now, though, it's the end of the week, and I have to post the latest round of grades.  I enter one class, about 150 grades' worth, no problem, and print out a hard copy for my safekeeping.  I enter class number two, my largest class, and get all six assignments into the system, so about 170 grades.  As I prepare to print out this class's grades, a glitch occurs.

Suddenly, my grade program flashes a message across the screen, something about needing to reboot the program, yadda yadda yadda.  No worries because this system has auto-save.  I bash the mouse buttons, anyway, hoping to bypass the error code, but to no avail.  With three minutes until my eighteen-minute lunch break, I figure I'm good to go, right?

Wrong.

I re-boot the program to make sure is all is well and discover that all is not well.  I have lost about 130 of the grades I just spent time entering into the computer.  The last thing I intend to do on a snowy Friday is stay late to enter and post grades, so I decide to work through lunch and re-enter the damn numbers.  I sit at my desk, alternating between entering data and trying to stuff salad into my mouth.

Finally, with my planning period coming at the end of the day, I have one class left to enter, about 130 grades. I get sidetracked with an impromptu meeting.  Then, I get sidetracked helping a co-worker renew his teaching license via the Internet.  I get sucked into a conversation.  I have to pee.  I need to pack up my backpack for the weekend of work to prep for next week. I have three student reports to write out and file.  I'm also trying to eat the salad that I didn't get to finish during my working lunch.

Before I know it, my planning period has come and gone.  I end up staying until 4:00, anyway; that's the bad news.  The good news is that as far as I can tell the grades have gone through and are safely posted where they are supposed to be.  Oh, and the other good news is that I can eat my salad for dinner because it's still only half-eaten at the end of my nine-and-a-half-hour day.  I have to clean the snow off my car first, though.  Can't blame that part on technology, although there would be much less snow on my car had the system not crashed in the first place preventing me from leaving at the regular time.  TGIF.