I spent most of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday emailing back and forth with a student athlete’s mother.
I don’t want to get into the details of WHY I’M RIGHT, but trust me. I am. And she’s wrong.
But I caved. The student’s principal was involved into the ridiculous conversation, and the parent even went up to school to meet with the principal late Friday afternoon. So I caved. Not because the principal made me, but because I was sick of dealing with this stupid mother, and I didn’t want to inflict her on anyone else (she was, more than likely, going to go to the head principal with this, I’m sure).
This kid does not deserve to pass and play. She is smart enough to do the work, she just chooses not to — which is the most infuriating kind. There are kids who can’t do the work, or struggle with it; she’s capable when she wants to be. She just doesn’t want to bother, because she’d much rather flirt with the other worthless lumps in the class.
I graded her assignments fairly. I made an allowance for her taking the late assignment the mother wanted me to take. I made an allowance taking the late assignment turned in incorrectly (wrong file format; I did not take the wrong file format from other students because I have to click on seven different things to open the bleeping file. No, not a big deal, but when you have to take an extra minute to open the file 90 times, because you have 90 students in that course, then that’s an extra hour and a half, isn’t it?) I made sure to grade her test the same way I graded the other students’ tests.
I entered all the grades.
Her average?
68.53
Seriously.
I took the shreds of remains of my principles that were left and threw them down the garbage disposal as well, and added 10 points to each of two quiz grades to give her the 1.5 points she needed to move up to a 70.03.
This makes me want to throw up. Which might happen, on this student’s face, if the student dares say A WORD to me about grades tomorrow morning.
