By Connor Gard

With our second semester lurching into its second month, grades for many are starting to be put into place.

These grades may not be the greatest, and the students may be brought into the office to talk about them, or if they’re really bad, be threatened about them.

During the end of January and the first week of February, I was brought into the office on multiple occasions to talk about my attendance and grades.  Normally it wouldn’t be too much of an issue to go and and have a quick chat about why my grades are low or aren’t necessarily improving, but being pulled in two or three times in a two week period began to be a hassle.  With it being such a short period of time, I would think that someone would understand that grades wouldn’t change a whole lot within that period, but I guess I thought wrong.  While attendance was a piece of my problem, it always would come back to grades and why they are in a poor position, and I understand the concern for these grades for a second semester senior, but being pulled constantly starts to become an annoyance.  It can also become an issue, since every time I’ve been pulled, it was from a class I was doing poorly in, which removes me from the class that they want me to improve in the first place.  

Now, the real issue is that the last time I was pulled in, it had changed from check-ins and talks for improvement to walking in and being threatened to improve my grades.  Normally, a threat would cause someone to panic and seek immediate reprisal for whatever they had done, but it was lackluster, and honestly, not really a threat.  I was told that I was not allowed to attend the Sadie’s dance, which may work for some of the preppy students who do all of their work in the first place, but for me, who didn’t plan to go to the dance, it’s an entirely empty threat.  Not only is it an empty threat, but if I did plan to go, I would be able to personally go into the office and thank them for saving me some cash.  Threatening me to save some money seems like a pretty good deal to me.  

Past not being allowed to go to Sadie’s, I was told if improvement wasn’t seen, I wouldn’t be allowed to attend Prom, and ultimately not be able to walk for graduation.  But again, if I’m not allowed to go to Prom, that’s more money for my pocket, and I could just go out on a nice date or something instead.  Graduation-wise, if I don’t pass my classes, I can’t walk anyway, which is something that is, or should be, understood by the senior class anyway.

My advice for the administrative staff: if you want students to improve their grades, use actual threats.  If you want us to fix our grades, force students to either stay after school for time to work on their homework or make up work that they missed out on, or even try to lend a helping hand, don’t just threaten them with being able to keep their extra money. It’s empty threats like those that really only work for the students who want to attend out-of-school events in the first place, not really the kids that are having issues in school or want to keep away from it.