Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Badge of "Honor"

Today the subject was math, specifically algebra 2. They had a worksheet on logarithms to do.

We were well past the beginning of the period, and I was walking the room. I found a student sitting and staring into space. I asked him to get out his assignment and get working. He then told me that he did not have the worksheet.

Funny. At the beginning of the period I stood in front of the room with worksheets in my hand and I asked if they all had gotten the worksheet. I waved the worksheets in the air. "Anybody need one?"

So, I got the slacker a worksheet, and I stood there for a bit to make sure he got started. He didn't. Neither did his neighbor (though he had the worksheet out and on his desk). I tried to prod both of them along.

The first slacker then explained that he did no work in the class. He got out his latest grade check. It said that he had 22% in the class. 22%!!! That's an F. That's a pretty low F (though I have seen lower before).

Then the second boy got out his grade check. He was doing better. 40-something percent. That's still an F, but it's a slightly higher F. With the quarter ending shortly, there's no way that either of these boys will be getting anything but an F on their report cards.

The sad thing is that they were both kind of proud of their grade. Sigh.

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