Days Until Science Expo: 8

Now that I'm finishing up the last of the grades, I am slightly less depressed about them. This marking period is much more comparable to last marking period than I thought. A handful of kids improved, many went down 2-3 points, a few went down dramatically. Most of the kids whose grades went down were already doing poorly last marking period. That makes me uneasy, because I feel like if I had supported them more, perhaps they would not have dropped so far. But the rest of the grades are much more reasonable than I initially thought - and I neglected to mention that our "passing" standard is 75%, for various reasons which I don't feel like going into right now. Using a 65% standard, which is normal, very, very few children would fail. That's not an argument against setting the standard high, it's just a way of feeling a little better about things. Whatever. I'm still looking forward to parent conferences about as much as going to the dentist. It's not that they're ever that bad - even when I was working in a school where I failed far, far more students - it's just a time in the year when I go through a lot of self-doubt, and this particular March it's worse than usual. I guess I'm doubting myself in a ton of areas right at the moment. I'm sure tomorrow will be extra-fantastic on 4 hours of sleep, which is what I'm looking forward to tonight....