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The third quarter ends a week from tomorrow, and a lot more students than usual are failing/perilously close to failing. This is due to a combination of the marking period being much shorter than the previous two, and me being much stricter about not accepting work that is late and/or obviously half-assed. Anyway, I realized that I can’t really fail half of the seventh grade, so I decided to offer a bailout package to my failing students. It’s a packet of a bunch of review work from the past unit, as well as a two page essay assignment on the topic “Why I Am Failing Science and How I Will Convince Ms. Rubin That I Should Pass.” I gave each failing student a piece of paper with the following on it:

I (DO/DO NOT) accept Ms. Rubin’s bailout package so that I can pass science.

Signature: ____________________________________________________

This way none of them can claim that they didn’t know they were failing or what they had to do to pass. Only one student chose the “DO NOT” option, but one quick parent phone call later and I have 100% buy in. I’m sort of a vindictive teacher.

Hopefully they will all complete the package and learn something from it, and not use it to give themselves paper airpline bonuses for being such great students.