Writing Reports

I've spent the past three days working on my student's reports for their 3rd quarter at school. Any teacher would agree with me that this is probably the most tedious job a teacher has to do. Not only do we have to grade them based on their performance, we have to write a short paragraph commenting on their behaviour as well.

After 3 days of raking through the cluttered mess i have in my mind's passive vocabulary store, I am finally done. Phew! Mean phrases i am tempted to use like "the little devil", "slow coach" and "conniving crook" and not so mean but negative words like "unable", "can't", "won't" and "always" are banned from reports.

So what do you do when you want to say "Your little devil of a son has been sitting with me during recess for bad behaviour. He is capable but chooses to do as little writing as possible. What he needs is one solid whack which only you can give. He is only motivated in being the class clown and I am almost fed up having him in my class."

Well, obviously! You just can't say that! Not if you want to keep your job! so you say.... "-----'s contribution to class discussions this quarter shows that he is a very capable learner with potential to produce quality work with much greater effort. As he takes responsibility for his learning and makes wise choices regarding classroom behavior, he will achieve greater success."

And what do you do with the comments you actually wanted to say? Put them on your blog of course!