I had started keeping the names and classes students were in back in the late 1990’s when I was the teacher of the gifted and talented in our district. I found it useful when doing record keeping for testing in grades 3-5 that identified those students that would qualify for the program. The district did have a system on their network where secretaries in each building could input student’s names and who their teachers were in any given year. They would printout class lists that way. I was given paper copies of those class lists and then made my own spreadsheet, using Excel. I was the keeper of the informal school spreadsheet.
Once I had the Excel spreadsheet, I could use it to make a number of forms that were more functional for me to use. I could also print class lists for teachers that included names and empty grids that could be used for their own paper record keeping. At that point there was not a lot of electronic record keeping going on. Whether or not the system the secretaries used could make those kinds of forms was unknown to the secretaries or they were unwilling to take the time to find out how to, considering all the other work that they had to do.
All I required from the secretaries in each building was any changes to class lists during the year such as class moves, new entrants, or students leaving the district.
The harder part came the following year when I got new lists for that year. I would bump up the students a year and create a new column in my spreadsheet for their new teacher placements. What was interesting was that the only records that the secretaries had of the different teachers a given student had over the years was on a little rolodex that was on their desks, in which they crossed of one teacher’s and name and added the new one, or by going to the students permanent record file and looking through the different report cards or notations in the file that specified who their teachers had been. Again, the secretaries may have had a way to do this electronically, but none of them knew how.
I was the only person in the elementary school as time went by that could pull up a students name and see all the teachers that student had over the time that covered when I had started keeping records to the present day. I was always surprised that no one else thought that this was important.
When the gifted and talented position was eliminated, due to budget cuts, I continued to keep these school records in the school that I was assigned to as a classroom teacher. I now had a list all students in my building grades 2-5. Each year, I would eliminate the old 5th grade and add in all the new 2nd graders to create that year’s spreadsheet. I only needed my own class, but still kept the records and shared printouts with the rest of the school, special area teachers (especially for report card grades), the nurse and individual classroom teachers.
It became more interesting when classes were formed for the following year. Teachers would make requests, such as keep these students apart, or this set of students is a bad combination, and for the most part the suggestions were followed in their placement. But I could do what no other could. Once the classes were initially proposed, I could not only look how they were placed based on their present class, but on previous classes those students were in. Occasionally I would discover that students that ended up in the same class from different classes one year, were together in a class the previous year or one’s before that, and the recommendation at that time was to separate them. I thought it was good to have that information, but unfortunately no one ever acted on that information. The excuse was always, children change over time, so the initial recommendation may not hold anymore. It was a good rationalization rather than have to remake the groups again. For me it was just fun playing with data.
When I retired, no one took my place in keeping lists. The district moved to a better electronic record system, which I hope can create user specific lists that are useful to teachers. As for me I continue to plod along learning more about spreadsheets and their functional uses and passing on whatever knowledge I can to others.
