Last Thursday, my high school’s quarterly progress reports were released. Our school runs on a semester-based grading system, but grades are closed and progress reports are released at the end of the first and third quarters. This allows the parents and students to see how they are doing in each class and show what they will have to do to bring their grades up for the semester. So, I began to think about the importance of grades closing and what students must do keep their grades up.
- Take retakes whenever you can — if it will be beneficial. My school allows as many retakes as you want at the teacher’s discretion. So, if a get a low grade on a test that I know I could have done better on, I schedule a retake. Sometimes a retake is not practical, though. For example, my English teacher always makes his retakes harder than the original test so kids don’t use the main test as a glimpse at what is on it and then study for the retake. So, if your school has an easy retake policy, use it!
- Keep up on our grades. Some schools, such as mine, use online grade reporting software, such as Edline. Every two weeks, the teachers are required to post your grade reports on the Edline account so parents can monitor it and students can know what to fix. This makes it easy to do your retakes quickly and fix grades before they close. If your school has these, take advantage of them and check whenever possible so you can be on top of the ball.
- Do stuff quickly. Waiting three weeks after a test to do a retake will probably end badly. Odds are, the teacher will say no because you waited too long. Even if they say the retake is okay, you have forgotten a lot of what you learned and are not currently studying it in class, so it is not going to go well. This is also true with homework. If you don’t know when it is due, assume it is due next class. That way, you won’t have a zero weighing down your grade.
Keeping your grades up can be hard, but there are many steps a teenager can take to make sure they have good, satisfying grades.