report cards

It's been warm. It topped out at a shade over 70 degrees today. I've been looking forward to the warm weather. My Korean co-workers didn't even have the heat on today.

The part of my job that I loathe the most is, by far, report cards. They wouldn't be so bad if I only had to do them a couple times throughout the year, but that's not the case. Once a month I have to fill them out. Once a month I walk into work and am handed a stack of 120 of them, and I get a strong urge to tear my eyeballs out.

Completing one report card consists of awarding the student a grade from A (Excellent) to D (Needs Improvement) in categories that cover their English ability and their attitude. Then, on the reverse side is a comments section where the teacher writes a few sentences about the student's performance. It takes me maybe 2 minutes to fill one out, so it's an extra 4 hours or so of work spread out over a week-span.

Now, while in theory the range of grades a student can receive is from A to D, it's not so in practice. Since this school is also a business, they want the parents to think that their child is a gifted angel. This being the case, the lowest grade that I am supposed to give out is an A-. A few times I've gone as low as a B. In many cases this isn't really a problem because a lot of the kids really are quite brilliant and are great students. But, the way the system is set up, a student who turns in absolutely no homework for the entire month will get a report card that has their homework grade as an A-, just a shade under excellent. A student who pays no attention in class and is blatantly disrespectful to their teacher gets an Attention/Manner grade of A-, damn near perfect.

The comments section that I fill out is equally meaningless, mainly because I'm writing in English to parents who can't read or understand a word of it. Pretty much every one that I write reads like this: (Student's name) is a bright student with a strong willingness to learn. He/She has shown good improvement in the area of (pick a category at random). I would like to see him/her work on (pick a category at random). Great Job!

If the kid is a real pain in the ass and never does homework, maybe I'll stick something in along the lines of: At times, (student's name) struggles to focus in class, and needs to be more diligent toward homework.

So, report cards are pretty much a tedious and mind numbing task of kowtowing to the parents and reinforcing their belief, no matter how false, that their child is smart enough to perhaps someday cure cancer.

I can do about ten of these in a sitting before my brain starts to hurt.