yesterday was one of the longest and hardest days i've had at work since i've been here. it was the deadline for lots of different projects and assignments i had to do on top of teaching. it would have been a stressful enough day in its own right, but i ended up having to teach ten classes with only one class off since one of the other teachers was out sick. five straight classes with the kindergarten kids, followed by a break, and then five more straight in the afternoon was more than i could handle.

one of the things due were the monthly evaluations we do for each student. this month the school is trying to get more official by having us test the students and provide the results to the parents in the form of a fancy looking excel graph of their child's performance. it sounds like a good idea, but in reality it's not that simple. for example, the students who bombed the test had to be retested and if they failed again, which some of them did, we had to just fudge the numbers so they were closer to the rest of the class. and then in some classes the korean teacher told me i should bump up certain kids' scores since their parents would freak out if their kid wasn't at the top of their class. of course that meant some students who did well got pushed down in the ranking, which i don't agree with.

and then finally to top it all off, my boss informed us that we have to include the actual tests with the evaluation when we mail it to the parents. we explained that this would be a very bad idea since we had to fudge all those numbers and it's only going to confuse the parents and reveal that the fancy-looking evaluations are merely fabrications based on fuzzy data and manipulated figures. she didn't seem to care, so now we'll see what happens when angry and confused parents begin calling to find out why their kid's score doesn't match up with what's on the graphs. it's madness.

the irony of it all is that the switch to the new evaluations is supposed to make the school look more organized and official, but it's effect is going to finally reveal the truth that it's just the opposite in reality. i just feel bad for the korean teachers who will have to find a way to respond to the bewildered parents.

meanwhile parents' day is coming up and we had to make cards for the students to give to their parents. i had to make them with giraffe class, the youngest and newest students, so basically i had to hold their hands for the whole process. they still managed to write everything backwards and upside down, or scribble all over them.

i wasn't able to finish everything on time, but at that point i didn't care. so much had been asked of us lately, with so little time to get it done (never mind getting it done well), it was just impossible. i stayed late about forty-five minutes, but once i realized everyone else was gone, i got out of there. now i'm trying to enjoy my freedom for a couple of days knowing on monday i still have unfinished work to do, most of which was due friday.