‘A’ For Effort, Pt. 1

December 21, 2010 10:11 pm Sir Haxington Stories

Again, I made all this up. Seriously. Seriously! Why are you looking at me like that?

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High school teachers come in all flavors. The new, young, cool Spanish teacher. The AP English teacher who wears a corduroy jacket with elbow patches. The just hot enough history teacher.

One stereotype that seems to be pervasive in the American public school system: The coach that teaches a remedial class, usually math. In his case, it was a track coach who taught not-so remedial physics. The ladies track coach.

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Headed on a clean college trajectory, he and Chris decided to take physics together. It was an advanced class. Or at least it was supposed to be. They had heard that Mr. Robertson was well liked but a little crazy. The rumor was that last year, when a student fell asleep in his physics class, he quieted everyone then hooked a car battery up to the sleepy student’s chair. The kid was both literally and figuratively shocked.

The year started off just fine. Physics turned out to be a fairly typical class that involved a few labs and experiments. Experiments with known outcomes. Actual experimentation with anything in a high school was probably illegal. Better to keep it safe and offer the illusion of science.

The first few weeks were boring, at least, intellectually. While Mr. Robertson was an entertaining teacher, students didn’t learn much from him. He’d do a wacky experiment, like bring out the Tesla coil to make the kid’s hairs stand on end, then tell the kids to do problems out of the back of the book. Chapter 7. Electrons. Have fun. Hope you’re self motivated.

Mr. Robertson didn’t seem all that interested in teaching class for the most part. One day, he and Chris took Mr. Robertson out to look at each others trucks, during the middle of class. It was a good half hour wasted. They should have gotten a clue right then and there that this would be a weird year.

The students sat at 20 foot long tables, the front most of which happened to be pressed directly against Mr. Robertson’s desk. Chelsea and Tara sat in the front of the class with he and Chris directly behind them. Chelsea was on her way to becoming the salutatorian, but she was a major air head. No one counted on her to engage in an intelligent conversation outside of class, unlike her friend Tara.

The big problem? Chelsea regularly cheated off of Tara, and Tara allowed it. Peer pressure.

The cheating wasn’t a secret. He and Chris had already heard about Chelsea and Tara’s common disregard for honesty. The rumor mill ran rampant, but here they were witnessing it in first person. It became obvious when they saw Chelsea glancing over at Tara’s paper every so often during a physics test. Later, it became much more blatant, when she actually made grunting noises to get Tara’s attention with the goal of copying directly from her test. They even witnessed Chelsea pull out a crib sheet once and use it for reference, mid-test.

Sure, they too had cheated from time to time, but nothing serious. Their level of cheating was like doing 30 in a 25. What they saw was Chelsea committing vehicular manslaughter on a daily basis. But, cheaters only cheat themselves, right? So who cares? They were smarter than that. Eventually, they would get caught. Right?

It wasn’t until maybe the third test they started seeing the cracks in Mr. Robertson’s foundation. A hypocrite. One of the first adults they couldn’t trust in a powerful position.

Oh, dear reader! One important fact of life must be revealed: Chelsea and Tara were also the stars of the ladies track team. The very same ladies track team that Mr. Robertson coached.

Mr. Robertson stared at his computer monitor and occasionally glanced up during tests. One time, during an especially obnoxious cheating session, he and Chris both watched Mr. Robertson look directly at Tara and Chelsea as they passed a paper back and fourth during mid-terms. Mr. Robertson said nothing. He did nothing. Mr. Robertson, a public school teacher saw he had been caught in the act of taking decisive non-action, smiled at he and Chris, then looked back to his monitor as though nothing immoral had taken place. If you ignore it, it’ll go away. Eyes on your own paper please.

It was that day they knew they had to do something. Outing a track coach and physics teacher is no small task. Since his father was a teacher as well, there were a lot of politics involved. Chris fired the first volley.

Every few days, students would be required to answer a series of questions, hand written on notebook paper, from the end of the chapter. At the end of the week, those papers would be stapled together and submitted for grading. Those stacks would then be handed back to students after grading. Next week’s work would be stapled to the top of the old stack of homework. On the top most stack he’d  write 65/65 or 40/50 or X/X for however many questions there were and how many students got correct. The idea was the stack would be used as reference at the end of the year. Easier to study from. Not a bad idea, in theory.

After mid-terms, they noticed something was wrong. They started receiving 50/65 or 30/40 for no apparent reason. But they had done the work. They were sure they had the correct answers. But there were no marks on their homework answers. No explanation of why they had gotten a few wrong. Simply less than the maximum score out of the maximum score.

Chris decided to test a theory about Mr. Robertson. An experiment. One week, he didn’t do any work. He simply turned in the stack of papers from the previous week.

40/45.

Mr. Robertson wasn’t checking the work at all.

Their other good friend Kyle was also in the class. While he wasn’t as smart as the other two, he was much more… driven. It’s rare for high school students to wear khakis, polo shirts, leather shoes, own a Rolex, drive a brand new vehicle and talk about purchasing stocks. But that was Kyle. He was no cheater, at least no where near as bad as Chelsea, and he too was in the running to be salutatorian. At least he deserved it.

Kyle couldn’t wait to hear how the experiment went. After he heard about the results, he wanted some retribution. Kyle had a sneaking suspicion he was being slighted by Mr. Robertson as well. Here was an adult, a high school teacher, unfairly manipulating the futures of three smart high school boys in favor of two pretty, arguably athletic, and obviously stupid high school girls.

Oh, dear reader! Another important tidbit of information must be exposed: Mr. Robertson also graded on a curve. A curve he was controlling.

Chris continued his experiment for three more weeks. 45/50, 40/50, 35/45. Then on the fourth week, 15/50 and ‘COME SEE ME’ in bright red letters. Uh-oh. Too far.

Mr. Robertson confronted Chris about not doing any work that week. Chris wondered why Mr. Robertson gave him any credit at all. He managed to dodge the fact that he hadn’t done any actual physics work in the past three weeks. Things returned to normal soon thereafter but Mr. Robertson kept a closer eye on the physics questions. He also tended to be harder on them in class in a disciplinary sense. No more half-hour truck ogling breaks. Back to reality. Oops, there goes gravity.

He had always maintained good grades. He was quiet student, mostly kept to himself, didn’t try to piss off Mr. Roberson (unlike other teachers), and maintained a A- in the class. Chris slid into the C range, while Kyle, in the running for salutatorian, was sitting at a B. However, they now felt cheated. These weren’t the grades they had earned. Sure, it was what they were given, but it had no reflection on reality.

Depressing. Demoralizing. How was it possible a teacher could take such life damaging actions against their students and get away with it?

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Pt. 2 is here. Because I felt like it.