This isn’t the usual rant, although I’m pretty sure after 5,485 posts over the last thirteen-plus years, I’ve probably written it before. I locked grades for the first quarter today, and in keeping with previous practice today’s classes were given over to test retakes and missing work, or for doing nothing if you were satisfied with your grade.

Y’all, I only had twelve kids fail my class this quarter. That’s out of a hundred and thirty-four. That’s 8.9 percent. Thirty-two in my regular Math class are getting an A, plus seventeen more in my Algebra and Math lab classes. 36.5%.

I gotta admit, that number feels too high, although it’s skewed by my other two classes being Algebra and a Math Lab class that nonetheless is full of Algebra students. But even my regular Math classes managed 29.6% getting an A. That’s crazy.

To put this in perspective, I have had plenty of individual classes where more than 12 kids were failing. Typically if it’s below fifteen percent I feel okay about it. I really want to go back over the last few years and compare my grades during first quarter to see if I’m just remembering wrong.

So, what am I doing right now? Congratulating myself on, at the least, motivating more kids to get their work done, because it’s not like there’s anything I can do if they choose to do nothing? Marveling at how my command of my craft means that my kids are really learning this year, and that’s the reason grades are up?

Nah, of course not; I’m trying to figure out where I’ve gotten easier and lazier about grading. There is no good news in my goblin brain, and there are a million ways to take anything that looks like good news and turn it into bad news.

Tomorrow, I get to remind everyone that grades are starting over, and because of that when half of them don’t turn in their assignment tomorrow, that half will wake up on Saturday morning and find out they’re failing Math. I’m also super psyched about the way the good news is only going to last for about a day.