Skewed columns from FRED, a monthly newsletter
published by the Worcester County Teachers
Association. Editor, Gwendolyn Lehman Skewed I broke my finger. October 31st. Not that I'm
superstitious or anything. And even though there
is never a convenient time to break a finger, this
was an exceedingly inconvenient one. I was working
on two shows, had two perfor-mances of one of them
that week, and was going to have to have surgery to
fix my finger. All this and some pretty heavy
medica-tion while all the while the count-down to
the end of the marking term was speeding up. There
were mega-papers waiting to be scored, units
waiting to be wrap-ped up, and grades waiting to be
entered in PowerSchool. All I wanted was to hear
someone say, "Ahh, don't worry about it. It's only
grades. And grades are cumulative, so this one
doesn't matter." No one spoke, except to say,
"How's that finger?" "That finger hurts and the one next to it
isn't really pointed at you," I'd reply. So, I did my grades, but not well. As a
matter of fact, I did them badly, and needed to be
rescued by Mr. Beatty so the Honor Roll could be
printed and kids could be notified and parents
could be made proud. And all the while, I'm
thinking to myself, "Does all this really matter?"
Well, of course, it matters to somebody, just not
very much to me. I have this broken finger. It does matter to kids, of course. As a
matter of fact, it matters so much that the only
acceptable grade to have these days is an "A,"
whether you've earned one or not. When they don't
get one, they actually seem startled. "But I got all 'A's on my home-work." "Yes, on the three you handed in, and zeroes
on the twenty-eight you didn't." "Can I make those up?" "Can you fix my finger?" NOVEMBER 06
Gwendolyn Lehman