Facing Tomorrow

Emily drove to school that Monday morning toward the end of September trying to remain calm. Joe, the football coach, had asked Friday if he could see her in the office, next to the mail boxes, for a short meeting about one of his football players, Rod. He had told her he liked to stay on top of the grades of his senior players. Which was a good idea. Usually coaches were concerned when their players received mid-term notices of poor grades, but Joe was asking even earlier this time. The problem was that Rod wasn’t doing too great – about a D. He was still passing, to be sure, in her Creative Writing class, but he was getting awfully close to the bottom. He had missed a few assignments, and then he had not paid much attention to the requirements of the work he did do. It was obvious to her that he didn’t really care; he probably just needed one more credit to graduate, and he was hoping he could squeeze by with a D or C. Sometimes students would take Creative Writing, feeling it was the way to get an easy credit before graduation. Like what was so hard about writing, anyway? She had heard comments like that before, actually from both students and teachers. Math teachers, for example, might not understand how involved a writing class actually was. Anyway, she was sure Joe wasn’t going to be happy to hear about Rod’s lack of progress. As she drove she tried to notice the beauty if the maple trees that were just starting to turn red, shouting to everyone that fall was here. And temperatures would be dropping soon. It was hard, however, to think of anything else but seeing Joe. She drove into the school parking lot, unlocked her classroom door, dropped off her purse and brief case, and started out to the meeting. Then she remembered she needed her grade book to show Joe, so she turned around. “Hey, Emily,” Pat called from her desk in her room as Emily locked her door for the second time. “You look like a woman on a mission. Everything okay?” Emily crossed the hall to speak. “A meeting in the office Joe, the football coach. Talk to you later.” Then she strode down the hall to the office, not wanting to be late. Joe was there already, waiting outside the office. “Thanks for meeting me, Emily. Rod is one of my top players this year, and I want to make sure he stays eligible to play.” “No problem,” Emily said, opening her grade book. They moved next to the wall to get out of the way of other teachers coming in. “He’s still passing, but with a D.” “Hm… Not horrible, but not good either,” Joe said. “Thing is, it’s an easy class, right? All he has to do is write something, right?” “Well,” Emily said, not sure how to proceed. Why did everyone think a Creative Writing class should be so easy? “He has several missing assignments. And one of his problems is not paying attention to the requirements of the assignments he does do.” “Requirements?” Joe asked, looking puzzled. “How many requirements could there be to just write something?” Emily could feel her blood pressure rising. This wasn’t the first time she had been told that Creative Writing must be an easy class, and they never meant anything positive by such a remark. Just write, people said. How hard is that? “Okay, can I give you an example?” She looked in her grade book again. “Rod got a 68 on this character assignment. They had to write about a person, using dialogue with another student, and in the process tell us about what he looked like, how he felt about school, and what time of year it was.” Joe got quiet. “So everything that is required has points, I suppose.” “Right,” Emily said. “I learned years ago that the grade has to be rather objective so it would seem fair to the students.” “I see,” Joe said, reluctantly, Emily thought as if it pained him to see she might have a point. “Okay, I’ll talk to Rod, and we’re going to get his grade up.” Then Joe abruptly turned and headed toward the gym part of the building. Emily stood there a minute, watching him walk away. The meeting could have gone worse, she thought. At least he didn’t yell, or tell her how unfair she was. She walked in the office to get her ail, then went to the cafeteria for her usual iced tea, which she definitely needed, she decided.