Distractions!

Trying to be Superteacher can get you in trouble. Hands down, the one thing I would have done differently this week is a decision I made in the process of finalizing the grades of my students for the first 6 week period. Our grades were to be finalized by 9 a.m. on Monday morning. I went through the entire process except for the last step which was clicking the “SAVE” button. I stopped at this point in the process with the intention of adding in some conduct comments. Enter the inevitable “teacher distraction”. Getting pulled off task is one of many potential pitfalls teachers face. My attention was redirected to another task needing to be done before homeroom. The next thing I know, it is deep into second period and an Administrator has sent an SPA to my room to inform me I was the ONLY teacher which had not finalized grades. I was holding up the entire process. Containing my horror and embarrassment, I told the SPA to please inform my Admin this task would be done immediately. So, what would I have done differently? Manage my task and the time needed to complete it better. The decision to add conduct grades was well founded. The decision to allow something to separate me from the very important task I was on, not so much. Going forward you can rest assured I will not leave an important task incomplete to accomplish a less important one.