I’ve had some failures in teaching in the last few days. During the review week before our final exams, a lot of my students felt that they were ‘done’ with the term, and it was really hard to persuade them that they needed to start prepping for the exam in history. After arguing for a while with them, I finally gave up. I’m not proud of that.
I’m especially not proud as I see how poorly so many students did on their final exams for the term. More and more, I feel like Washburn’s system of setting targets is appropriate: a lot of students didn’t have any data memorized, or facts in storage. As a result, they didn’t have the level of knowledge that they needed in order to be successful as they could be in completing a final exam (it didn’t help that the history exam was on the last day of exam week).
Our accreditation process is nearing completion, and the faculty met today to vote on the individual standards for accreditation. We gave ourselves a “pass” on all the standards — there are things that need fixing, we know, and things that are in need of improvement. But we do know what we need to fix, and so does our Board of Trustees, and so does our headmaster. Furthermore, our fixes are already on the table, so to speak, and part of our overall plan for school improvement. So that’s good.
