In one particular area, my dad is an exceptionally organized person. Dad has managed the “family filing cabinet” from the beginning of time. No one else removes or files any documents; we have always given them to Dad who places them exactly where they belong, and we benefit from his efficient and reliable system, because we use the time saved in filing or locating important documents, statements or receipts, to help him find his keys, which somehow escape his organizational prowess.
Among the family filing cabinet treasures, you could find out how much the Ford Capri cost in 1984, the itinerary for our family trip to L.A. in 1988 (when Dad lost the keys to the rental car!), and the telephone numbers of any house we ever lived in, either as a family or independent adults (your children will just have one, global cell number).
Among those treasures, and quite unbelievable to me, are originals of every report card I ever received, along with those of my sister and brother. On the afternoon a few years ago that we were all together at home, and Dad pulled out the dusty report cards, we spent most of the time laughing about who did better at each grade, a sort of poker game, “I’ll bet you that my fifth grade report card is better than yours…” and interestingly, my brother, who hands-down is the smartest and most financially successful of our bunch, never “won.” We laughed, because now that we had finished school and taken on life, our grades had become irrelevant.
If Dad had not saved those report cards, the grades we had earned would have been completely forgotten from our memories. I do remember the time I got “straight A’s,” but I remember mostly due to the fact that my parents took me out to my favorite restaurant all by myself; that was a great night, and I don’t need the report card to remind me. No report card helped me to remember the times I felt successful or was really stuck and then “got it,” in essence my memorable learning experiences and what I learned. I don’t remember what grade I earned in 4th grade, but I can remember as clear as day that it was the year I mastered long division, and that Mrs. W. introduced us to the works of a different famous artist each month through her own whimsical pilot project in art appreciation (Art History I & II were later my favorite courses in college).
Report cards are significant and necessary; they identify and provide a snapshot of academic and behavioral progress at a certain point in time. Report cards are documentation of the averages of the grades that your child is earning on assessments, class work, group work, independent work, and homework. We use a grade scale so that the information can be understood by parents, students and other academic institutions. We are required to issue report cards, but let us never lose sight that the goal in learning is not the exceptional report card, it is learning.
This year you will notice a change in our report cards and feedback. We have updated our report cards to be broader, more global, and have also translated them into Spanish. New to our report cards this year is the Core Content grade of N. An N indicates an average below 70%, it indicates Needs Improvement or, in the case of core content, Not yet achieved. We have implemented this grade because we believe in learning, not in failing to learn. If your child earns an N, your parent conference will be the opportunity to understand what learning or behavior changes are still needed and how we can work together to make those happen.
On the 2nd—4th grade report cards, you will also see that instead of separate Reading and Writing grades, we have merged these content areas into the global heading of Literacy. This change goes along with our philosophy that we want children to be more than competent readers or capable writers, we want them to develop the skills and habits to be independent, critical, literate thinkers and communicators who are able to read for meaning, use that information to adjust or add to prior knowledge, and then interact with the world successfully through their oral or written communication. The Literacy grade will be a composite score of Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking.
Finally, on the report cards we will document the Encore Courses in which your child has participated. They will receive a P (participated) or NP (not present), the latter only in the case that they do not go to that Encore class.
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