I have been teaching for more than a decade now, so you’d think nothing would surprise me. You’d be wrong. Have you ever heard about the concept of “finding Jesus in a foxhole”? It means, basically, that there are no atheists in foxholes–once you’re in danger, there IS a God, and you want Him to help you.
Students (and their parents) face this same syndrome, only in high school there are no foxholes; there’s just the end of the semester, also known as the “marking period,” or the time when the grade “counts.” For some reason, what we’ve been doing all semester, all 18 weeks of it, matters now. It didn’t matter last week, and it certainly didn’t matter 17, 16, 15, 14 weeks ago. Now I am inundated with student and parent conferences, notes, emails, phone calls to try to figure out what the kid, who might have done NOTHING all semester, needs to do to go from a 14% to passing overnight.
Here is a sample of yesterday’s correspondence (all names are fake):
1. “Please excuse Hector from the final. We were busy last night, and he didn’t have time to complete it.” Let me clarify that the final writing assignment was assigned more than a month ago, and I gave the students several time periods in class during which to work on it. But, yeah….I’ll just excuse Hector from having to do it. Why not?
2. “Please allow Heloise to turn in her English final next week. She had band practice for 3 hours last night and just didn’t have time to write that paper. If she can turn it in next week, she will be able to do a much better job. Thanks for your understanding.” Sure. After all, band practice is much more important than English. Next week when I’m on vacation, I’ll be thinking about Heloise’s paper. Then I can grade it and go through the paperwork and hassle of a grade change when we return to school in January. Why not?
3. “Mrs. Scow, I know I haven’t done much this semester, but is it okay if I turn in all of my missing assignments tomorrow? I’m almost done with them.” Really? I should stop grading all of the final papers that came in on time and must be in the gradebook by Thursday and grade work for you that you didn’t do for 18 weeks? Sure. Why not?
4. “We are disenrollling Herberta from school because she has been bullied all year long so we are moving her to another school where she will be less likely to harm herself. I just looked at your gradebook and was surprised to discover that Herberta has an F in your class. We have demanded that the new school allow Herberta to play on the basketball team even though she did not make the team here because the coach was a bully, and they said she had to have all passing grades from this semester. In order for her not to harm herself, we need you to change her grade to passing.” Gee, if only I had known that Herberta was having such issues, perhaps I could have helped. Instead, you chose to keep her out of school at least 3 days a week for the entire semester, during which time she did not do any work, nor did she ever come in for any appointments I set up with her to try to help her get caught up. Not to mention that my gradebook is live on the Internet and can be accessed from any computer–I’m surprised you didn’t know she had an F prior to now. Plus, grades are posted weekly in the classroom, so I’m surprised Herberta didn’t know she had an F. All the phone calls and emails home about her F and spotty attendance must have gone unnoticed as well. In order to make things better for her, though, I’ll just change her grade. What would you like it to be? Why not?
5. “If I do really good on the final, can I bring my grade up from a D to an A? I have to have an A. If I don’t have an A, I can’t go on vacation, and we are leaving on Saturday, so I really need the final to be worth enough. Okay?” Why not?
6. “I see in the gradebook that my child has a 90%. What are the chances that she will not do well on the final and end up with a B? She can’t end up with a B. If she gets a B, she won’t get in to Harvard, so I need you to ensure that her grade does not dip below 90%.” A, thanks for keeping tabs on the online gradebook. B, thanks for knowing that we have a final. C, why not?
7. “I see in the gradebook that Hattie scored a 69% on the multiple choice final. Is this accurate? How did she score 69% ? What did she miss? Is this a typo?” I don’t know why she scored a 69%. No, it’s not a typo; she really scored 69% on the final that was given today and entered into the gradebook 12 minutes ago. Thanks for checking in so often. Would you like for me to change her score to 75%? How about 82% Why not?
