Still More School Stories--About Seniors

Once upon a time, when I was teaching Sophomore English (with public speaking as a semester requirement), my teaching assignment was changed to teaching Seniors.  Except nobody told me.  Some Senior students had received their schedules for the next year and were telling me how delighted they were to have me as their teacher.  Uh....huh?

After a couple of those conversations, I took myself down to Guidance and started asking questions.  The counselors there had deer-in-the-headlights looks.  They knew about my reassignment but DIDN'T know that I hadn't been told, so wouldn't confess.  They were protecting the admin.  I boldly said, "I think it's a little sad that the  Principal knows, the Department Chair knows, you guys know, and the students know, but I haven't been told."
Shortly thereafter, the Principal called me down to tell me.  I wasn't happy.  A fear years later when my teaching assignment changed again, I was told immediately.  So much for communications.

Teaching seniors was a challenge.  Some were on the mark for their futures, but others were just skating through for a diploma.  Effort during senior year was totally iffy.  We had a school policy that students who failed one of the two semester terms, then failed the final exam, were guaranteed an F for the semester.  I taught a required class to graduate.  Teachers of seniors were admonished to work them right up to the last minute to avoid pranks, but were also told that there should be "no surprises" come the end of the year.

Let me translate that.  The admin wanted to know weeks in advance which Seniors were at risk of not meeting credit requirements so the parents could be informed, but since the exam scores wouldn't happen until a mere couple of days before graduation, it couldn't be done.  More than once, I hedged on grades.  (Couldn't do that later after software was installed to keep track of grades.)  Within my realm of considerations with kids on the bubble were:
1.  Was my class the only one that the Senior was failing?  Would an "F" in English be the deciding factor between passing and failing Senior year?
2.  Who would benefit by retaining an at-risk Senior?  Will the student stay in school and attempt to achieve needed credits?  Is the student conscientious, wanting to learn?  Is the kid a good citizen (i.e. not a behavior problem)?  If the answer to any of those was no, I flat-out decided that no one--neither student nor school--would be the better for holding the kid back.
3.  This factor, to me, was the most important:  Some students have issues that simply don't work well with book-learnin'.  They are charming.  They have skills, most of which have nothing to do with playing the school game or their potential success in life.  One year, I had a Senior that had such a serious case of OCD that the noise in his head wasn't going to allow him to succeed in a traditional English classroom.  I accepted that English literature simply wasn't going to be important to him.  He was already re-taking Junior English at the same time that he was in my Senior English class.
At the beginning of every school year, I promised every student that, if they were working to fulfill assignments and trying hard, I would never fail them.  I was true to my word. 

There were other issues.  At the time, we had a state competency test called ISTEP.  It was administered at many levels below sophomore year.  Anyone who failed it as a sophomore had three more opportunities to pass it at the junior and senior levels.  (It was a different test every year.)  Teachers had no clue who these students were until told.  The threat was that kids who couldn't/didn't pass it at the upper levels would be denied a diploma. That was a joke, but read on.

Since I was the teacher of English 12 (required for graduation), the Principal provided me with a handwritten list of seniors who had not yet passed the ISTEP test.  It was my job to tutor these students for weeks in an effort to prepare them to take the test one last time.  Understand that we were not given school time to do this.  If my schedule and the students' schedules--each one different-- matched up, we could do remediation lessons during school.  Otherwise, we would have to meet up outside of school hours to get that done.  Seniors are notoriously busy with jobs, sports, and social lives.  Very few can/will come in early or stay late.  The extra tutoring was a tricky situation, and there were about ten kids on my list, which made it trickier.

One day, the Principal was sitting in for a teacher who'd had to leave early.  As I passed by that room during my prep period, he hailed me.  In an angry tone, right in front of the students in that class, he said, "Megan M. tells me you aren't providing her with ISTEP tutoring!"  I'm sure I looked befuddled.  Megan M. wasn't even on the list he had given me, and I told him so.  It was quite obvious that he didn't believe me and thought I was slacking.  "She has to be!  You are her teacher!"  I told him I would check on it.  I marched upstairs to my classroom and grabbed the list he gave me, in his own handwriting.  Nope.  No Megan M. on it.  I then marched back downstairs, with the list in hand, and showed it to him.  Now it was his turn to act befuddled.  He was flustered, trying to second guess to whom he had assigned Megan M's remediation, then explained what he "must have done".  He didn't laugh at his mistake, nor did he apologize to me for his accusatory tone when displaying his displeasure about how I had failed.  I never quite forgave him for that.

Fast forward after my retirement.  I ran into Megan M. on Facebook and jokingly told her how I had gotten in trouble for the Principal's mistake over her ISTEP situation.  She filled my visual "ears" with the truth.  Apparently, her parents had gone to the Principal demanding to know what the school was doing about ISTEP tutoring, since they had been informed that remediation would be provided but their daughter had received none.  He was on the hot seat.  Assuming that he had assigned their daughter to me, I was the problem by which HE had gotten into trouble with parents--except he hadn't.  Ah...the explanation that I needed in order to fill in the blanks, even if years after the fact!  I caught the flack for something he had failed to do.  And so it is...