The Infamous Report Cards

Monday, 28 March 2005

So I thought I was finished with school, but oh, not until these crazy report cards and parent conferences get done. First it took weeks, even months, for Matt and Christy to translate the report card in both Thai and English. Not even our administrators are clear on the words the meaning of some of the Thai words and educational prose. So, we finally got the books copied and bound with the lovely blue duct tape (Matt told me "Blue so suay!" because some other report cards colors she saw, bound in pink duct tape for example, were not so beautiful.) These report card books travel with each child from grade 1 - 3, so they have to be perfect, but these report cards have been a calculating nightmare!

Not that you care, but I'm going to tell you anyway: We have to separate each subject out by first term and second term, and then by a classwork point total and a final exam total. But, first I had to combine Music and Art into one grade, then Computers and Home Economics into one grade, and Thai History and Social Studies into another grade. Each teacher had different total amounts, so it required converting numbers and an entire Saturday trying to make the numbers make sense. It didn't help that the first term, we had different point totals for the classwork and final exam, so some things had to be manipulated ("made up") to make the calculations work out right. As a result, white out had to be used to correct some errors that were initially made. We had to fill out about four other pages for each child that had to do with the opinion of each child's "character", "freetime", "general knowledge ability" in each of the 8 subjects. And, to think, we only had 8 students this year! Imagine when there's a whole class of 20 plus kids!

Matt tried to explain some crazy calculations she was going to do to find the G.P.A. for each subject, for both the classwork and final exam totals, dividing the totals by the number of hours taught, and it just made no sense whatsoever to me and Christy...the calculations didn't make sense, and logically, I don't even understand the point of it. But, Matt seemed to know what she was doing, and even though I'm a little leary of her math skills (as I had to explain to her how to do a ratio this weekend), I just let her do it. She also told me today that she is going to rewrite all the pages we wrote on because other teachers said the white out/liquid paper we used is not beautiful. I asked her, "You're going to rewrite each page?!" She thinks the parents won't think it's beautiful. And the response to follow, the commonly heard, "Mai pen rai!" (Never mind!)

So, off went the lovely blue duct tape that binds the books and new covers had to be printed and new pages re-inserted...And Matt has been working on them for three days straight ever since.......And we're presenting these to parents on Thursday during conferences! I really think it's not worth the headache....But, whatever!!!! Just another example of how it's all about tedious paperwork and how things look here. Not that the parents will even look that carefully at the crazy calculations...I mean they're first graders! They just want to know if they passed or not! Then, they have to sign each and every little box under each score for each subject and about five other pages as well. (Which makes this whole process silly in the first place, as in Thailand, retention is unheard of, and students will always move on the next grade whether they have failed subjects or not.) ... But, at least the failing marks will look "suay", or beautiful.