Ah, the march through March. It’s not the prettiest month when considering education from the teachers’ points of view. There are no holidays, yet many late starts. There are no student-free days, but, this year, we got to have WASC come, which I hear was great, since I’ve never seen them. Ever. Been there 18 years–never seen WASC. Hey, I can find a rubric online. Send them my way and we’ll synthesize and annotate with the best of them.
There are 53 days left, yet this is the end of the quarter today. If the quarter is half the semester, then the semester would be 106 days. Since our school year is only 180 days . . .
But I digress.
March is a wonderful opportunity to spend a month with students and see their progress as we get time to teach them with only the pesky interruption of weekends. It’s a time to gauge their abilities and coordinate and align with them in an attempt to better everyone involved. It’s the month of multi-cultural days, where we realize that our cultures are all in this together, that many share similar histories, and that, even though it may not jive with our current beliefs, we should be tolerant, at the very least.
March is also the time when great students get rejected and wait-listed to colleges and universities while watching lesser students get into the same schools. No rhyme or reason to the selection processes. Universities don’t have to say why you didn’t make the cut–you just didn’t make the cut while someone who isn’t as good as you did. A fact of life. Good to learn it now so you can be prepared for future disappointments.
I try to read and do work in March. We read so many books and poems and wrote essays and poems and open letters and TESTS (scary, right?). March lets students do the thing they need the most–practice. I tried assignments that failed miserably. Practice. I trotted out assignments that had always been adored in the past, but now were not so much loved. Practice.
Let’s put it simply, for all teachers (and maybe some students) to understand. If every month were like March–a month filled with only days of school and no holidays–we would all be out in early May. That’s a tune most of us could march to these days.