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He gnawed his lip and glanced over his shoulder. Possibly at the clock or maybe the steady stream of kids rushing past in the hallway. I was leaning pretty heavily toward it being the clock; there was only five minutes to move between classes, and on a campus this big, a lot of students cut it close.
“I’ll write you a pass to your next class,” I said, and the relieved drop in his shoulders told me I’d read him right.
He relaxed a little and faced me again, adjusting his backpack strap. I tried to keep my expression as placid and open as possible. There was never any telling what was on a student’s mind when they pulled me aside. It could be literally anything from a question about an assignment all the way up to somethingwaymore serious. Like, the kind of serious that a mandated reporter like me couldn’t ignore.
Finally, Oliver swallowed hard. “It’s about my grade.”
I very carefully schooled my reaction so he didn’t notice my relief. His grade was quite possibly a big deal to him, but it wasn’t a literal life-or-death situation, even if everything felt earth-shattering at that age. I didnotmiss being fourteen.
And I knew Oliver’s grade situation already. It was seriously grim, and his parents and I had exchanged numerous emails. I didn’t blame him for being this wound up about it.
Setting his shoulders back, he said, “I need to get a C or else my dad will ground me for the entire summer.”
Also something I already knew.
“Okay. So what do you think we should do to improve your grade?” More like what he should do, but I was willing to work with students who were willing to put in the effort.
Oliver shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t know.”
“I can give you some extra credit assignments,” I said. “But those will only count toward your grade if I can also see that you’re doing your best on the final project and the last two exams.”
It was a tough love approach, but one I’d learned from a mentor. If a kid had slacked off for the first part of the semester but they were willing to bust their ass on extra credit as well as the classwork and exams to make up for it, then they deserved some grace. If the extra credit just served as a stopgap so they could skate through the important stuff? Sorry, buddy. Not in my class.
I could tell from the frustrated line of his lips and the way he rolled his eyes that Oliver was not pleased with my suggestion. “Can’t you just raise my grade?” he asked.
It took all I had not to laugh aloud at that. “So… just up your grade to keep you from getting grounded.”
“Yes!” He groaned. “My dad is so strict about it, and he won’t get off my back aboutanything. If you don’t raise my grade, he’s going to ruin my whole summer.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Ifyoudon’t raise your grade,you’regoing to ruin your whole summer.” Anger flashed in his eyes, but I didn’t let him take the reins. “Your options are extra credit and serious effort on the remaining work, or take the grade you’ve earned and whatever consequences come with that.”
“But that’s so not fair!” he protested. “I’m going to lose my whole summer just because I couldn’t remember all the countries in the EU or whatever? That sucks! I’m never even going to use this stuff!”
“You’ve got time to change the situation,” I said. “But it’s up to you. Not me. Not your parents.” I folded my hands on my desk. “Would you like me to email you the extra credit assignments?”
Oh, he wanted to go off on me. I could feel it. But his gambit hadn’t worked and now he was down to the two options I’d offered. Where things went from here was entirely up to him.
“Fine.” He turned on his heel and threw over his shoulder. “Send me the extra credit.”
He started to go, but I called after him, “Oliver.”
He spun around, glaring at me like he was about to both lash out and cry.
I held up my pad of late passes, and some of his fury abated. He shuffled back to my desk as I wrote out a late pass for him. When I offered that to him, he snatched it out of my hand and stalked out of the room.
I felt for him. Honestly, I did. Yeah, he needed to take responsibility and put in the work to fix his own grade. But that angry near-crying expression always reminded me exactly what I was dealing with as a middle school teacher. Hormones were a bitch. Classwork was getting tougher, and so was life. They were teenagers, and they weren’t stupid, but they alsowerestupid. Stupid in the same way everyone was at that age—where everything was a crisis, nothing was fair, and emotions ran hot at the slightest provocation.
Been there, cried about that.
It sucked that this was also the time in their lives when they had to step up and be smarter than their hormone-soaked brains wanted them to be. They were starting to face bigger consequences at the same time they were too volatile to cope with them. They were dealing with more and more of real life without any experience to provide the perspective and wisdom theyneededto deal with it.
I sympathized. A lot.
But not enough to let a teenager guilt trip me into magically raising his grade without him putting in any effort.
After Oliver had gone, I sent a quick email to the attendance office and to his next teacher that he’d stayed to talk to me, and to excuse his tardiness. Never hurt to cover that base in case the handwritten pass disappeared somewhere along the line.
Fortunately, this was my planning period, so I didn’t have a room full of students staring expectantly at me. I did have a pile of assignments I needed to grade, especially if I was going to get them back to the students in time for rewrites. Very few students ever took me up on the ability to submit rewrites for a higher grade, but I tried to give them all as much of an opportunity as possible to do so.
