Keeping Up

We have 7 more weeks of school, and this year I'm going to do my darnedest to stay on top of things so that I'm not under excessively ridiculous pressure at the end. They always manage to pile extra work on us, usually that relegates us to the role of secretary for something someone else wants to submit as some kind of report.

With this in mind, I have a reminder note on my desk of things to keep tallied throughout this last grading period:

• Field Day no-gos (because it was a royal pain trying to get the info together close to the date last year, and we have 22 now who have taken themselves off the list due to behavior)
• AR Goals (because every day this year that I've recorded their grades on this, it has taken me a whole day to get the information together, and I get the feeling that at the end of this year, I'm going to be doing good just to get out of here on time the last day)
• AR grades for reading nonfiction books (because THAT report is a royal pain to run, read, and tabulate, and it's better to keep a running grade so that I can nag students into completing their work)
• Daily Grades (so that I don't have a last minute, late-night grade entering session, and because some of those students need me to keep leaning on them the whole grading period or they'll slack off)
• In Danger of Failing list (because kids need to believe the reality, and the correlation between not doing homework or passing tests, and failing the 8th grade. I don't want ANY of them trying to claim that nobody told them they were failing - as if they weren't privy to their own grades the whole time. Not like it's some kind of state secret that we keep from them.)

Any why am I writing this here? It seems like a safe bet that this time next year, this entry will still exist, and at least I won't have to locate a paper with the information on it. :)