Progress (?) Re:Porting: A Modem/Modern, Stream/Team Approach

Remark-able, Question-able: As in "So, teacher, what's the bottom line teacher, is he making progress...will she make the grade...will he pass...ever make something of themselves...are they at least doing better than last year, after we paid out all this money for tutoring, after we agreed to re-tain...???" Another re-markable experience for students, as well as the 'teacher-parent' team attempting to "promote" them, which we adults all experienced as kids, especially as we passed kindergarten -- where we now see marked more ceremoniously, about nine months subsequent to the "Round-Up", as in "Kindergarten Graduation!"😁, a trend in education as well as society at large -- muchos kudos, every step along the way to a long term goal...through what once were known as the "grade school" years, where we started becoming familiar with letters, then "letter grades", the latter of which has gone through many iterations as both an educational and societal trend, of course...individual and collective (as in "individual" and "common" "GOALS")...

Re-Markable Experiences: Those that we might be inclined to mark down, in order to jog our memories, where others would just as soon not repeat (especially if it resulted in "repeating a grade" which is not easily forgotten, no matter how it is presented to the one who is about to do so). As we progressed, passed kindergarten (the traditional stage where "children prep to proceed to first grade, a combination of play and learn experiences", the emphasis of which has changed over the years)...as we progressed through the "grade school years" where we became more aware of grades themselves, which have undergone several revisions roughly paralleling the trends in the larger society, the ways in which progress is reported to parents and the younger consumers of education, a trend that has far reaching implications, beyond the "brick and mortar" (a term we are hearing more these days as applied to both education and business) within which much formal learning takes place, and now starts even before a parents' own working hours (e.g. email "blasts" as well as those drafted by your child's teacher the night before but timed to be sent before you probably woke, but time enough to have a chat with "junior" prior to his start of the school day...about "making better choices"). And throughout the day through, for example, "parent portal", "power school" and other names dreamed up to create this constant stream of information, ostensibly all "for our own good", to enable our teacher(s) and parent(s) to communicate...TEAMING!

Progress, RePorting: Well before our first formal "English" (aka "Language Arts") class, most of us had become reasonably versatile with the spoken word, after which we began learning and seeing examples "on the board" (now more often via "chrome book" etc.) how to break down words, sentences, even full paragraphs, and we learned that if any of these were not punctuated correctly, our "reports" themselves would be punctuated, sent back to us as a "corrective action", otherwise referred to as a "red letter day"  (covered here August 30th), if we failed to align ourselves with the "rubric" (a word that younger gens are more familiar with, but we all experienced in practice). Yes, "reports" in various subjects, short or long, began permeating our senses, even tenses, perhaps even making us so... Even in kindergarten, we started hearing, seeing what it meant to get..."reported"...as when, over the "P.A.", whether prior to or following formal "morning announcements"..."Teacher, please have ____ report to the principal's office..." After which we watched the "student in question" try and leave (and hopefully return) as surreptitiously as possible, under the circumstances...And, at least in grade school, if we attempted to usurp the authority of "crossing guards" or a peer just a grade or so above us posing as a "safety" (now subsumed under the larger umbrella of "service squad"), if we went around the outstretched arms or failed to yield prior to hearing the prosaic "OK, let's go" (aka "all clear!") we might hear just before getting out of range ("earshot" was the word we used in class when trying to engage in clandestine communication, that the teacher might not intrude on...otherwise known as whispering, which we were informed was "a bit rude", on our report cards)..."You're getting reported!" Talk about "positive peer pressure"😠 An experience that has far reaching effects, well beyond what 'they' call the "formative years" in educational lingo, well beyond the school days -- perhaps even simultaneous with what we are experiencing while being a captive audience, as in "compulsory education" our parents may be, at that very moment, be hearing about their own performance review, whether in the form of "To the parents of..." or, in the workplace, the so-called "P.I.P" which is ostensibly a tool to enhance, chart progress ("Performance Improvement Plan"), but to those outside of HR have come to understand is "writing on the (stall) wall"...Collective goals, individually, very personally experienced. So, are WE making progress in how we are re-porting or, instead do we as parents, teachers, and the younger consumers of education need yet another "rubric" to make sense of all this..."feedback"? 😔😕😀😞...

Next: "Testing, testing, testing..."