Making the Grade, Part Deux

In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, here are Wesley's grades for the school year to date in the same manner that I posted Heather's grades a few days ago:

Subject	P1	P2	P3
English	C	A	A
Mathematics	B+	A	B+
Health/Phys Ed	A+	A+	A
Social Studies	A	B+
Science			A
Computer Tech	A
Wood Shop		A+
Art			A

I consider Wesley's first marking period "C" in English as an indictment more of his teacher than of Wesley or his performance. Wesley's middle school has an on-line reporting system where teachers are required to post grades every two weeks, and parents can then log on to monitor the child's progress. That system also allows teachers to post all class assignments, but teachers are not required to do so. Regrettably, Wesley's English teacher steadfastly refused to utilize that feature.

I should point out that his English teacher was not his only teacher who declined to post class assignments to the on-line site. His other teachers, though, had relatively straightforward daily assignments with an occasional project thrown in periodically.

English class was a different story. Wes had to juggle three weekly assignments due on Fridays: a vocabulary list for which he had to look up definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and etymology; a composition complete with first draft, second draft, and final draft; and answering a series of questions from a reading assignment. In addition, during each 9-week grading period, he had to complete any four projects out of nine possible choices. All four assignment types (vocabulary, composition, questions, and projects) were extracted from different scattered sections of booklets called a Partner Discussion Guide (PDG) that accompanied each book the class was assigned to read. [Much to our chagrin, we did not discover one additional unpublicized complication until later: once the class moved on to a new book/PDG, students could no longer submit projects relating to any previous book.]

Unfortunately, little of this information was made clear to Wesley, and none of it at all was communicated to me—that is, not until a knock-down, drag-out, face-to-face meeting I had with his teacher, the vice-principal, and the principal himself at the end of the first marking period. That meeting became necessary after a frequent but futile exchange of e-mails in which I repeatedly requested that assignments be posted on-line so that I as his parent could monitor Wesley's compliance.

Alas, all of this was to no avail: even after our meeting, the teacher still never posted assignments on-line in any meaningful way. However, the meeting did at least provide enough insight so that I—and more importantly, Wesley—could better determine his exact weekly and quarterly (project) assignments. From that point forward, Wesley was able to do the work and do it well, as his English grades in the second and third marking periods will attest.

I find it particularly ironic that such a marked failure in communications occurred with an English teacher, of all subjects. And I am not Don Quixote: I will not joust with windmills indefinitely. The only reason I pounded my head against the wall for as long as I did is that it feels so good when I stop.

Double Play: Baseball Classic & Pop Psychology

I do not usually take kindly to blog sites that fill their pages with a virtually unlimited quantity of really large photos. Those sites take seemingly forever to load, so I almost always bypass them. However, I am departing from my usual practice of no photos for this one singular exception.

I stumbled on this marvelous rare photo of a young Henry Aaron at bat in an empty stadium. It is exceptional not only because of the subject (my favorite athlete of all time, along with Sandy Koufax) but because it is an electronic color image rare for that era (the late 1950s or early 1960s) and because the original image is large enough (4117 x 4077 pixels) to crop for an exact fit to any possible computer screen dimension. I have collected over 1,200 baseball wallpaper images and over 19,000 wallpaper images overall, but this became my instant favorite. That is why I chose to post it — that, and because I was looking for an excuse to see how both Wordpress and Blogger handle imported images.

By the way, those of you who know our family history might think that I became a fan of both the Milwaukee Braves/Milwaukee Brewers and the Green Bay Packers because we lived in Madison, Wisconsin for over three years when I was a youngster. Well, you would be wrong.

The real reason is much simpler. Soon after we moved to our first apartment in Wilmington, Delaware, I walked into the living room one day to discover my father watching a baseball game on television. Now, my father almost never watched baseball on TV, so I asked him who was playing. It so happened that he was watching either the 1957 or 1958 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Milwaukee Braves. I then asked for whom he was rooting, and he — a native New Yorker born in the Bronx — naturally answered, The Yankees. Contrarian that I was, even at that young age (and, of course, still am today), I became an instant fan of the Milwaukee Braves. I shudder to think what would have happened had the Yankees been playing, say, the Chicago Cubs!

Fittingly enough, the same thing happened three or four years later. I again walked through the living room one day when lo and behold: I encountered my father watching a football game on TV. I was even more surprised this time because my father watched football even less often than he watched baseball. On this occasion, he was watching the 1961 NFL championship game between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers. I again asked for whom he was rooting, and he naturally replied, The Giants. Voilà! I instantly became a Green Bay Packers fan. Once again, the possibility that under different circumstances I might have become a Chicago Bears fan makes be nauseous even to contemplate.

So, for all of you amateur psychologists out there, have fun with this one...

Making the Grade

Fourth-grader Heather brought home her report card for the third marking period on Friday. Her grades for the year to date are as follows:

Subject	P1	P2	P3
Reading/Literature	B	A	A
Writing	A	A	A
Word Study	A	A	A
Mathematics	B	B	A
Science	B	B	A
Social Studies	B	A	B
Art	E	E	E
Music	E	E	E
Phys Ed	E	E	E
Work/Study Skills	E	E	E
Reading/Literature	E	E	E

As frustrating as it was to see her miss straight A's just because of social studies, as a former mathematician I was pleased to see her finally get her first "A" in math (and science, too). I tease Heather and Wesley both by insisting that math is the only subject that really "counts." Their standard retort is that science is the only subject that really "matters."