Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Another student who ended up catching up on his grades the past few days was Jay. This is the guy whose mother, one day a week or so after midterm grades were handed out, called the faculty room in the morning to ask about her son’s status in his subjects, including mechanics lecture that I taught.

That’s not anything surprising. What is, though, is that his father accompanied him that same afternoon to talk to the same teachers. It’s rare enough that we see parents who are concerned for their child’s studies before the course card distribution, so that we give special attention to that pupil’s progress afterwards, but to have both parents conduct an inquiry on both fronts, either because of lack of coordination or intentionally, just swivels the spotlight a bit to apparently put the teachers in focus instead of the student.

At least what I said then was consistent about the boy’s standing in his classes so far, which was a bit below average. But before the father could say anything about his son’s chances of passing the course, I proceeded to talk about the bonus requirements I offered: the Innovation Week project and the field trip report, both of which the kid had not submitted.

The father immediately looked at the boy and clearly uttered a profanity. Well, so much for trying to put a positive spin on the child’s performance; the father instead paid more attention to the fact that his son had not been passing requirements yet.

Anyway, Jay did pass his field trip report the next day, and I accepted it even without the proper folder or envelope format, just to get it over with.

So the other day the whole holy trinity was in attendance this time, accompanying their son to get two of his grades: English and NSTP. Of course this is still after the end of enlistment week, which lasted until seven days after the course card distribution. If they were really looking closely at their son’s studies, why did they wait until after enlistment week, when they would now have to pay a late fee on top of the assessed tuition.

In English, it turned out that Jay was given a chance to pass an incomplete requirement by the teacher beyond course card distribution, otherwise he would have already gotten a zero.

What’s unbelievable at this point is that the student questioned why he only got a grade of one point zero. Was he expecting his final work to be so great as to boost his percentage up more than one notch, when in fact it was a win or lose situation for him? If his last submission was satisfactory, he passed, otherwise, he failed.

As for NSTP, it turned out that he changed groups in the middle of the term (or after the deadline given by his teacher in the first few weeks of classes). This meant that since in his teacher’s log he was still listed under his old group (who were performing badly that they did not complete the required sixty hours) he got the same incomplete grade that they did.

His parents even helped him write the letter (I could tell from the wording that he didn’t come up with that form) for his teacher wherein they had to track down the new leader of his, wherever he was this summer, and get his signature to facilitate his change of grade.

Session number 591 comes to a close. For now, class dismissed.