Friday
On Friday, I give him his “evidence record” – the sheet of paper that shows the grades a student has earned on various assignments throughout the semester. While I’m excited about the recent series of high scores he’s earned, his eyes move directly to the list of “Incomplete” work, assignments he simply didn’t do at the beginning of the school year. 

“So,” he says, and he slumps as if the paper in his hand is almost too heavy to hold, “how many of these do I need to do to catch up?”

Grade 12 did not start well for him. I didn’t know him well enough to ask, but I’ve been teaching long enough to recognize a smart kid in a bad set of circumstances without needing to know the particulars.  

“None.”

He looks up. “What?”

I eye him, “What would you learn by going back and doing these assignments?”

“Not to do it again.” His answer is almost rote, and maybe I imagine it, but I’d swear there is a tinge of despair.

“Really?” I wear my best skeptical look.

“Probably not,” he admits.

“Well, I’d say that our work has gotten harder, not easier,” (This is true: he skipped “This I Believe” in favour of Hamlet and increasingly complex analysis and writing) “so doing previous assignments won’t teach you much and won’t show me much. We’re supposed to look at the ‘most recent, most consistent’ evidence we have. And recently, your consistent evidence shows excellence.”

He needs to confirm what he’s just heard. He needs the actual words. “So I don’t need to do these?”

“Nope.”

He stares at the paper in wonder, then he looks up. “Are you a hugger?” he asks. “Can I hug you?”

I say yes, and I get a wonderful hug from a near-adult who maybe just learned that sometimes mistakes can and should be forgiven – a far better lesson than whatever grade is on the paper that was weighing him down a minute ago.

Monday
On Monday, she stalks into the classroom, wearing a tragic look. She plunks her backpack down and yanks out her book. I can’t say she slams it on her desk, but it’s close. I’ve gotten used to her emotional highs and lows, so I approach her warily.

“Rough weekend?”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Oh, so that’s how this is going to be, I think.I back off. She glares. Dark circles ring her eyes – and her eyes follow me as I set up the classroom for the morning. I try again. 

“You ok?”

“I didn’t get in to my university.”

I pause. I’ve known this might be coming. She is not doing well in English, and English is a gatekeeping class: universities tend to require certain levels in English class. She’s been a little mad at me since midterm marks came out – but her disappointment hasn’t increased her work quantity or quality. 

I stop what I’m doing and go to her desk to give her my full attention. “Oh no!” I am truly sad for her even though I am, I think, less surprised than she is.

“It was my English mark.” I would say she snarls, but she’s too sad for a snarl, and now tears appear in her eyes. 

“I’m so sorry,” I say softly – and I am, I really, really am. I wish I could magically make this better; I wish I could go back in time and help her learn the skills she needs to be successful in this class; I wish I could tell her she’s doing better now. Instead, I am stuck trying to support the actual human being in front of me, and I know that simply giving her a good grade that isn’t supported by her work doesn’t help her in the long run. “What do you need?”

She tells me the number grade she needs. It *might* be within reach – though honestly it will be a stretch, and we only have two weeks before the exam. 

“Ok,” I say. “Let’s work with that. Let’s concentrate on preparing for the exam.”

“But I’m terrible at essays,” and now she really is crying.

“Ok, but I can help. We can work together. And you might improve.” 

She might. She will need to use our next classes well. She will need to come into the exam with her notes in order, having considered what she wants to write. She will need to work. I want to promise that it’s within reach. I want to comfort her, but I bite my tongue. Comfort is cold when it’s a lie.

She hears what I’m not saying and glares at me again as she wipes away her tears. “Fine,” she says tersely, and opens her book.

Tuesday
On Tuesday, I wake to an email. Last night I “released” marks from an assignment Grade 9 students did before Winter Break. Honestly, I’d returned them before the break, when the assignment was due, but more assignments have come in, and I’m trying to get my grade book in order before we get to the end of the semester. I’d like to give the grade 9s a chance to catch up or improve, especially if they’ve learned something new. 

The email that I sent out shared their scores as a fraction out of 14.

The email I get from the student says, “Is this bad?”

Technically, I am an English teacher, but truly I am a teacher. I know that a person should be able to guesstimate – at the very least – if they’ve done well based on a fraction. I write back, “To figure out a mark like this, you are looking for the percentage. To find the percentage, you divide the first number (the part) by the second number (the whole). In this case your score is 12 divided by 14. The rest is up to you. Luckily, you’ll be getting back several more marks like this in the next few days, so you’ll get lots of practice!”

I wonder why this student didn’t know that they’d done well. It was a “quiz” (in the sense that there were answers, but it was open) in a Google form. Do they not remember it? Were they uncertain of their responses? Were they guessing on some? When I took quizzes, I usually had a sense of whether I’d done well.

I wonder how the student will react to my email. Will they be frustrated that I didn’t simply answer? Will they calculate their score? Will they calculate the grades they get in the next few days?

Then my brain wanders to grades in general. I wonder about them a lot. I wonder what they mean to students, parents, teachers, administrators, universities… I know they don’t mean the same thing to everyone. I wonder about numbers that make people give hugs and cry and send emails. I wonder about how these numbers fit into learning.

But it’s time to go, so I put my wonderings away and gather my things, glad that I’m not getting a fraction, percentage or number of any sort to try to tell me how I’m doing.