I say this in the full knowledge that you can do better.
Scorching words, scorching words indeed.
Sometimes words burn more than the strap and the cane put together!
“I’ve thought about your French grade a long time. I was choosing between a ‘B-’ and a ‘C’, not because you are atrocious at French, despite your protestations, but to call it a good period was a stretch at times, so it is a straight ‘C’. A ‘C’ is barely adequate, barely satisfactory; I say this in the full knowledge that you can do better.”
“What I’ve learned is that this [French vocabulary] needs to be constantly checked and consistently evaluated. I’ve also learned that you have worked on those conjugations. The mistakes are different this time, they are small, not the big ones from last time. You have to show the kind of attention and care that I know you are capable of. With the sloppiness out of it, it would have at least been a ‘B’. It gets you one grade down and you shouldn’t be satisfied with that. You need to work harder on that, we’ve spent all of December brushing up on vocab. Yes, we’ve improved but there is still some way to go. Sometimes, the student and the teacher have different expectations, some students think a ‘C’ is perfectly fine if it’s not their subject, but that’s not like you. A least that is my experience. Is it where you want it to be?”
“No, sir.”
“We have 18-minutes left of the lesson. Take a whiteboard pen and write this as many times as you can in the time we have left: ‘I must put more effort into my French vocabulary’.”
- Excerpt from ‘Report Card Woes’, SIX OF THE BEST 2022
READ the rest of the chapter, for free, here: https://jacquijames.substack.com/p/report-card-woes
**That was a chapter from SIX OF THE BEST 2022 which will be released this year**
Previous book releases, available here: https://jacquijames.substack.com/s/books
Best (s)Wishes,
Jacqui James
Live-Lash-Love
https://jacquijames.substack.com/
[ALL materials ©Jacqui James 2025]