The Weight of Report Cards

I just finished my last full report card. I have small paragraphs to write, but the big chunk of the work is done. Forever. Once I turn them in on Monday, once I correct the edits someone else makes on them I am done with report cards for the rest of my life.

Each report card weighs at least a pound. Not in actuality, but in the number of calories I consumed writing them. Yesterday I ate two cupcakes, a cup of hot chocolate, and a bowl of tortilla chips. That was a short day of writing. Today I ate more voraciously -- 2 cupcakes, though I'm contemplating a third, a huge bowl of homemade buttered popcorn, three tamales, two Riesen candies, and an orange. The orange doesn't really count as it was the healthiest thing I've eaten in the past two days except for the salad I just had for dinner.

When anxious, I eat. Good thing I don't smoke or drink. Instead, I snack my way through the endeavor, bouncing my knee up and down the entire time. Too bad the bouncing knee can't counter the intake of calories. It seems silly now, after the fact. I'm not sure why report cards make me so obsessively hungry or why they feel like an enormous mountain to climb before I start writing them, but there you have it. One pound per report card.

These aren't normal report cards either. In public school, the report cards went from laborious events to computer codes that I punched in under a half hour. Code #3 = Student is a pleasure to have in class. Code #36 -- Student is missing too much work to adequately reflect progress. Code #57 -- Student's behavior impeded academic progress.

Now report cards are a minimum of two-pages, single spaced, typed narratives, a flood of platitudes and criticism all couched in coded words, not coded numbers. By the time I'm done, I am out of words and a pile of cupcake wrappers and dirty dishes spreads out before me.

There are two good things about finishing these report cards. First, as previously stated, they are the last I will ever have to write, but more importantly, I won't be there in the fall to hear any criticism from the parents this year. They can't email me and complain about my wording or my critique or ask for clarification. They can't call me up and give me an earful. They just have to swallow the words and spit them out at someone else at school. I won't be there. Oh, I might be there out of curiosity, but I won't be there officially and that is the sweetest feeling of all.

Meanwhile, my summer of exercise and eating better sits before me. That's the commitment of course. That's been the commitment every summer since I started teaching 22 years ago -- I will exercise more, eat better and less, and take time to really be good to myself. Some summers I was quite successful at it, but the summers of late have not been so accomplished. I've put on extra pounds and always the bulk of them at the end of the year while I'm pounding out report cards.

A month or so ago, while searching for some photos for my mother, I found all my report cards she'd saved and sent to me. I read them with trepidation. I was not that second grader anymore. I was not that fifth grader nor even tenth grader. Even my college grades did not reflect all I'd learned in life, yet here I was today, grinding away at finding just the right words to properly assess the selective mute in my class, the squirrel with a severe case of ADHD and the angry girl who is venturing back to public school where she's going to get devoured in seconds flat.

I want to think my words matter, but looking back on my report cards it wasn't the words that matter at all. It was my relationships -- with friends, with teachers, with fellow students. I've known that about my teaching. I've known that the "A" grade, the well-crafted platitudes and concerns didn't matter in the least. What mattered was mattering in and of itself. The kid needed to matter to me and frankly, not all of them did. I tried. I tried to keep my opinions about them to myself and treat them all like they were special and unique, but there were some who made teaching beyond difficult.

I won't name them. I won't even describe them, but I have a full head of gray hair to attest to my animosity and aversion to some of them.

I tried. God knows I tried and I know despite my rancor they went on with their lives -- some of them more successfully than others. I was blip on their screen. That's how I thought of myself. Hold in my irritations and I'll just be a blip on their life's screen.

I know I was more of blip on the screen for most of them, but I'm not going to kid myself -- I was not more than that for some of them.

And so I move through the next five days, anxious and a tad bit hungry. There's fresh strawberry rhubarb crisp cooling on the stove. With a bit of vanilla ice cream I'm certain it can pull me through the next week. One more pound of coping. One more pound and then I'm done with the weight of report cards.