Deadlines

Teachers work to a series of deadlines.
Every day we have to plan, resource, present and assess in 3 to 5 one hour sessions, each with it's own deadline, the bell that announces the end of each session (or spells as we call them in Nuova Lazio High, as periods have been removed from the school vocabulary as being too demeaning to menstruating females)

We have just completed the Junior exams, which had to be organised with each teacher having a set time and place to go to for their turn at supervising an exam room.  The exam papers have to be marked by early next week, because another deadline, the report deadline is rapidly approaching. 

The report deadline is itself made up of a multitude of sub-deadlines for printing, proof-reading, re-printing, DP's comments and final printing and posting.

Unfortunately, a few of my colleagues couldn't recognise a deadline if it came up and bit them in the arse.  They're always late, or in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even unprepared for a lesson.  There's not many, but they make life difficult for the rest of us.  We all can make mistakes, but when you see the same mistake happening again and again action needs to be taken, except it doesn't.  They get away with it.  I would sack the buggers.  If they're still making the same mistakes after 7 bloody years, then it should be either dismissal or death.  Their choice.

Anyway, the Reports.  We spend days weeks or even in some cases, minutes in crafting these important statements on our students' performance over the last year.  Each sentence is carefully checked for grammar and syntax.  Each paragraph is lovingly moulded to be a glittering entity, striking in it's elegant simplicity, conciseness and lack of ambiguity.  The entire statement is checked and double checked for errors and compliance to the accepted style.  Our Deans, responsible for the pastoral care of our young, will add crisp, elegant comments on the little darlings' overall attitude and achievement.  Our Senior Management Leadership Team will then grace the bottom of each report with a short but pithy sentence, hand written in a cursive copperplate script.

None of this is required.  We can autiomatically generate the results of every assessment that the students have been given.  We can automatically generate their attendances, sickness and pastoral incidents.  We can even generate all of their sporting and extra-curricular activities and successes. We only need to add the following comments to complete the picture.

Academic	Behaviour	Attitude
Good	Good	Good
Average	Average	Average
Poor	Poor	Poor
Concern	Concern	Concern
Thick as Shit	Ape-like	Complete Dickhead

Seeing as many of us use the blesséd Copy and Paste, perhaps sometimes to excess, the simple comment table shown above is possibly just as accurate, and definitely more accessable by most of our parents and caregivers.

Anyway, I must get back to finishing off my reports, as I've got a bit behind because of my timetabling responsibilities.  I've got a deadline to meet.