School Part 2: Paperwork

OK so this entry may not be that appealing, but I thought I would write about all the paperwork that’s involved with being a teacher since it is a big part of what I do and takes quite some time. Now being a teacher even in America involves paperwork however, there are some differences. Like last year for instance around this time while practicum teaching, I would take attendance and record grades and although I would have hard paper copies of records, the primary way of tracking everything was electronic. As you can imagine, posting grades online so that students can check at home is not quite an option here. In fact, everything is paper-based and hand recorded. Now I know computers and internet have not always been around and that teachers in America usedto do everything paper-based but I don’t think that people would really comprehend until they actually had to do it. So I will give a general break down of some of the paper-work at school. And keep in mind that although this is all about school, just imagine how all kinds of other establishments keep records here without regular use of computers (there are computers here but not everywhere or as common as back home)

Daily Paperwork:

As a teacher on a daily basis there are two important books that must be completed: Cahier de texte (log book) and the registred’appel. The cahier de texte is one big book that every teacher is to write a summary of every lesson they do. Each class has their own cahier that stays in the classroom. As the teacher comes in, at the end they are to fill in the cahier in their section (it’s broken down by subjects) with the date, time, how many hours, what they taught and their signature. This book is important because wheninspectors come to the school, they look through the book to see what has been going on. And as I’ve heard before, if you don’t write it down, it’s like it never happened.

Cahier for the class I oversee- lovely pink

In addition to the cahier de texte, the registre d’appel is also to be completed every class and usually stays with the cahier (so again there is one for every class that is usually in the classroom). This book has a roster of all the students in the front with their numbers. Then all the pages have carbon copies. This book is how attendance is monitored. Every class period the teacher is supposed to call roll (usually you just call the numbers rather than names of students). If there is no teacher and aka no class, a student will usually call roll for that period. At the end of the day, the original is torn out and turned in to an administrator while the copy stays in the book. And for report card time (I don’t know for sure as I’ve never seen it) but I would imagine that someone has to go through by hand to calculate how many absents a student has.

Registre d'appel for my class

So in addition to these two books, there are report cards to fill. School here is broken down into 3 trimesters with 6 sequences (2 to a trimester). Usually around week four or five of a sequence, teachers start giving exams. Which that also involves lots of paperwork. And this I know teachers even in America have to deal with- grading or as they say here ‘marking’ exams. But something that does take more time is the actual administering of the exam- no photocopies here unless you want to pay for it yourself which with almost 200 students I don’t think you want to. So instead I write my exams on the blackboard. Then after all the marking and returning of exams, it’s time to fill report cards. There is a huge book- bulletin de notes- and again each class has one (if aclass is super small, maybe two classes will be in one book). These books are kept in the vice principal’s office. There are again original pages and then carbon copy pages. A teacher is in charge of every class and at the beginning of the year, that teacher must go through the bulletin de notes and write every students name in order along with their date and place of birth (I have a sixth grade class with 65 students- it was a lot of fun trying to ask them their birthdates and write everything in 5 times each). Then when it is around the end of the sequence, all the teachers who have taught that particular class will check the book out from the vice principal to begin filling grades. A teacher must write their name, the students’ grade, the coefficient (basically the weight or credit of the class), the coefficient times the grade, then comments and signs. Once all the teachers of various subjects have filled their grades, the teacher in charge of that class must do averages and rankings. So for example, once I see that all the teachers have written in grades for my sixth grade class, I take the book home and have to go through adding up every student’s grades, finding their average, ranking them, then writing comments and signing every report card- took about 3 hours the first time. Then I also have to hand back all the report cards and deal with any miscalculations or errors (which obviously do occur when you are trying to add and average so many different grades). The bulletins de notes are kept at the school all year long and throughout the years as obviously they are the only record of a student’s work.

You can't quite even tell how big this book is here but on the left you can see the a sample report card- notice to the far right it's filled out with lots of red- this student didn't do well

Well those are the biggest and most time consuming items to be filled, but there are still a few other forms that are filled out every time (such as how many hours you taught each class, how many students passed, failed, etc). Oh and did I forget to mention also that for all paperwork, certain colored pens are to be used- yes. Mostly blue for the cahier de texte and registre d’appel. For the report cards, you use blue if the student passed but red if the student failed. Just one more thing that makes filling out paperwork fun- having to switch back and forth between colored pens.