“I turned that in!” “I gave that to you!” “Oh that? I never got that.” The grading deadline for the first nine weeks clamps down like one of those chambers where the walls close in to crush you alive. Pressure mounts, time runs out. Industrious students turn intense. I had one girl do test corrections on a 97 she made back in October. The clueless come alive as if from a stupor. Those that have struggled all semester to get you to work for them turn up the heat. The anti-sub sentiment ramps up, and their contempt wafts through the classroom like an ominous breeze. “When is Madame Le Vrai coming back?” They ponder aloud. Audibly. Others show up to class wearing what amounts to a Teflon suit from which all accountability, effort and assignments slide to the floor. Or wearing those T-shirts their mammas must have given them to wear: My homework? Your problem.

Up until the end of October, there was an unfortunate glitch in the PowerSchool gradebook for my sections. Some incorrect setting caused everyone to have 100 even if his actual individual grades for classwork, quizzes, and tests were not that. The grade calculator was off. Mind you, anyone with a 5th grade math education could look across the bar and see that three Fs, two Cs, a B and an “Incomplete” on the recent test could not possibly add up to a 100. Parents, who may only check the front screen from time to time, saw that perfect score and went on to hound their child’s science teacher instead. And so for the first six weeks, my friends and me, all 129 of ’em, we flew below the radar. Random observation: you don’t get much investment from students or their parental entourage when they are making As. No one makes a peep. Then, after some weeks of working on it and figuring out what went wrong and “correcting it,” Le PowerFool, we suddenly had on our hands what can only be deemed a désastre: accurate assessments of what little Jean-Pierre had been doing (or not doing) for the past two months and a term deadline bearing down on us like locomotive.

You can see how this might a problem for Madame Le Sub. Key word: Argument. If I am not their real teacher, well then, that “C” can’t possibly be their real grade. The shocking thing for me is that the demise became, or tried to become, part of the day’s lesson. Class, take note. Two inopportune times to discuss your individual progress: (1) the beginning of class and (2) the middle of a lesson. How do you say “I kid you not” en francais? No qualms, no qualms whatsoever about raising their hands in the middle of a lecture on the passé composé with their own personal woes: “I looked on PowerSchool and it says I have two zeroes in this class.” “Huh? Oh. No, I don’t know what they are but I know I turned ’em in.” Or a Schoology message at 10 o’clock the night grades are due: “Hey Madame Burk, whatumi missing?” Their whacked-out ethos and sense of self gets the English teacher in me twitching with the ways they address and compose messages to (for all they know) a professional adult. One student fires off an email with this in the subject line: “my C+ in your class??????,” a row of question marks carrying her indignation right to my kitchen table. In a million years. Like, whatumi, thirteen? Some more well-versed and well-trained wish me a pleasant day, inquire how I’m doing and even apologize for contacting me “after hours.” That’s considerate, since my brief stint in Teacherland has convinced me that there really isn’t anything as that. You, I think. You pass. You may advance to personhood. The rest o’ ya, you’ll need to repeat a year. Maybe two.

The “I will accept any late assignments at any time for any reason” policy that seemed so conciliatory is quickly a nightmare. For the last week or so before the grading deadline, I literally showed up at both schools with a dozen folders containing every assignment since the beginning of school and a big green folder labeled MAKE UP WORK marked with my instructions on how to mark each paper with your name, your class block, today’s date and the original date of the assignment. Total number of submissions: 67. Total number adhering to my clearly stated rubric? Three. And do you know I still had students fail to find their missing assignment, avail themselves a second copy, and turn it in? And guess who’s right behind them taking me to task on last of last days? Yep. Mesdames et Messieurs No-do. Feeling a little, shall we say, testy by week two of the paper chase, I give one particular section a “pep talk” about personal responsibility and turning in work on time. In a tone I hope isn’t too snarky I ask the 26 of them with about a 60% attention rate at that point in the class: “What was your plan? How did you think you would complete the missing work? Shall I show up at your door with these handouts and some Dunkin’ on a silver platter?” It’s what I’ve been thinking to myself for weeks, now voiced. The words settle while they seem to consider the question and its implications. One little girl in the third row who made a spectacularly low grade on the test and hasn’t done much since doesn’t miss a beat: “I don’t like doughnuts. Could you bring McDonald’s instead?”

But the reality that there are 129 students stoked and hungry for the effortless “A,” upon whose spotless record a half dozen zeros are about to descend, is a bit terrifying as I walk through the school halls following the “PowerSchool fix.” That’s what we’re calling it, as those propping me up at this point realize the pickle we’re in. They know the shadow enrollment waiting in the wings. It is teacher workroom joke fodder and common knowledge: if the student is a pain in the %$#@! the parent will be even worse. I know once that thing corrects that there are going to be some very unhappy students with very limited time to recover. Sure enough, those handy 100s plummet to 27s and 33s overnight. Kids with grade notifications on their phones message me with alarm. Suddenly students I have not heard from all semester are awake, angry, on high alert. Students who have done diddly since September and weren’t really planning to do much but ride this one out have all this stored energy and untapped effort, so now they now want to spend it on making you jump through hoops. The dutiful want to raise their 94s and 96s, and the 58s and the 65s want pigs to fly or hell to pay if they don’t. Filling in blank grading slots for assignments that have been missing since the second week in September should be a simple exercise, a matter of keystrokes tidying up your gradebook for each section before submitting it to the higher ups for this term’s report card. Instead, it is like awakening a bear. In our culture, remember, everyone gets a trophy. So the notion that you might not receive a passing grade for an item you never submit it is actually a learning experience.

Still, I am a card carrying member of the redemption club. On so many levels. I am not going to spell it out here, on the internet, in French or English. But could you imagine per chance why I might have a special fondness for the ones who can’t quite get it together? The irony of being on the other side of a student pleeeaaading with me to enter her make-up work because her mom took away her phone and there’s this thing she wants go to over the weekend. They are the ones my heart wants to help. They are the ones they get my stern life lecture. They are the ones I set my sights on for learning French. In my six classes I probably see 20 to 30% who are already behind what I’m putting down. As if they’ve had this all before in some past life. Names on their papers and every line perfect after that. They are the ones that set the bar and make me know the lessons are good. But the ones blowing it out of the water, completely off base, they are the ones I go to. The students in ISS for a day, bent over their little study carrels in a spare room? Two boys, from two different blocks, for reasons I don’t know and never will. My job is to supply them with classwork to keep them busy during in-school suspension, and to keep these infernal “0”s off their record which will cost us both later. I carry their work down to them, check in, maybe give a little spot lesson on adjective agreement or a sample on the worksheet, make sure they’re in a good way and have plenty to do to dig out of the hole they’ve dug. Yes it’s a metaphor as big as the one in my back woods and the boy who dug it. And to be perfectly honest…I been handing out shovels for sometime now. Sometimes I even come alongside and help dig.

I try not to think too hard about the state of education. That is, the value of it. “Hi Madame Burk, I am really worried about my grade in French. I know you’re not here tomorrow and we don’t have school Friday but do you have some really quick and easy handouts I can do to raise my grade?” Not, could you please explain, can you show me, can you help me understand, can you make this stuff stick in the place I call my brain and help me to speak French? But that. The grade. Always the grade. It makes a girl a bit of a cynic, tu sais? “Have I given you my spiel on how learning a foreign language will change your life?” I ask the students in B4, my smallest class, the most well-read and no surprise the most invested and eager to learn. The only ones who knew where Spain was on the Unit 1 test and the one class able to carry on conversation during a recent mini-lesson on Armistice Day and the Treaty of Versailles. Ah oui, Madame, yes. Many times. I know the things I want them to take away. From our time together. It has nothing to do with verb tense or vocabulary. I am forming my curriculum just as fast as I can, laying that track one day ahead of the train and it goes like this: Never give up. Never. Always try, no matter what. It is never too late. Have some confidence in what you’ve already done, and keep going. What you get wrong will be the things you remember best. (“If that’s true then some day I’ll be a genius!” says one whose papers have more marks of mine on them than his.) Sure, I want you to speak French. That’s why we’re here. But more than that I want you fluent in industry, purpose and life.