 Keep screwing over your group members? This teacher is tired of your shiznath. If you like true revenge stories, you found the best place for your vengeful needs. Rejoice and behold, a single story episode in which a teacher witnesses a group of seniors who spend all year fricking over their classmates. While their entitled rich parents keep blaming the teachers for their incompetent entitled embryos. The particular flavor of this revenge comes from the fact that everything that goes down is the result of a domino effect that leaves nothing but devastation in its wake. Invite the like button to your house party, but be sure to emphasize it to dress casual. Don't tell it that there actually is a formal dress code. Afterwards, just explain it away with a oopsie. Naturally, viewer discretion is advised. This content might be disturbing to snowflakes. This is my first post here, and for reasons that will soon become obvious, this channel speaks to the depths of my soul. I won't skip any details, because I want you to delight in my destruction. But some details are deliberately vague, because I don't feel like getting sued. This story is for anyone who has ever been fricked over in a group project, and I certainly hope you enjoy it. I've been teaching for many years, but it's important to understand that in my first year of teaching, I got put on blast by an elite group of entitled parents and their entitled embryos. Not a week went by without someone either demanding my job, trying to undermine me or just calling me a piece of shit. I nearly quit halfway through the first semester, the verbal and emotional abuse was so bad. This was at a school in a tough area, so I was accused of racism constantly for asking kids to stop talking. Was ripped into forgiving failing grades for missing work. And even enforcing the rules in the student slash parent handbook got me in hot water. The principal reprimanded me for being a negative influence on the school, and I was told that I needed to let more rules slide, because he was tired of hearing from parents. I would have parents just choke, unannounced to sit in on my lessons, and then tell me I was a shitty educator. A bad human being, etc. I have plenty of horror stories from that school alone. But the point I want to make is that this experience defined the kind of teacher I became going forward to my next school. I needed to be that person who was untouchable. Because I needed to focus on the one job that mattered, teaching kids. My next school was in a fairly affluent area. It wasn't uncommon for me to find out that my students' parents made millions, which brought its own unique set of problems. However, my new principal was super supportive of me as long as I followed the school's handbook to the letter because, by doing so, I was in line with the school's philosophy and protected by law, we seriously had parents filing frivolous lawsuits all the damn time. This school had long ago learned, that caving to parent demand spilled blood in the water and brought the rest of the sharks and droves. My first year at this new school was successful for many reasons, but primarily because the school culture was easily adapted to. By planning ahead, I was able to head off 99% of all negative parents at the pass. The few times a parent tried to rip into me at conferences, I ripped back so hard that I developed a reputation amongst the kids and parents as someone you couldn't fuck with. Everything I did was in line with the rules, and any attempt to take me down got stonewalled by my principal, who would have to say. Mr. FighterJet is following school policy, so I'm afraid the ultimate decision is his. No joke, I had some parents in tears because their kid could no longer get an A in my class. I wasn't the teacher who wanted to destroy kids, I just wanted them to be accountable, and sometimes that meant, letting them fail. Needless to say, this job became a lot of fun, because instead of waiting to be ambushed by parents, I could work on making my class fun for my students while still teaching them something. I made ironclad rules for the classroom that brooked little argument and would adapt the following year. To make it harder for students or parents to room my day. I have many stories like this, but this is one of my favorites. The year this happened, I taught a HS class with grades 9 to 12, that's 14 to 18 year olds for you overseas guests. My class wasn't necessary to graduate, but did count as a core requirement. One of my beginning of the year rules was, I never want to hear when will we ever need this? Because you didn't have to sign up for this class. How I structure my class is that I try to make students accountable for their own actions. My class was built so that it had something to offer everybody. If you tried your best, you were guaranteed a C. If you worked really hard, you could get a B or an A. I would bust my ass to help a student with any reasonable request. The best example of this was, a student was working hard on an assignment and said, I think I understand it now, but can't turn it in on time to which I answered, then turn it in tomorrow for full credit. This is how hard work pays off. Other than a few hard deadlines in my class, I would do whatever it took to see you learn the material. Fuck around in my class. I have already found ways to run circles around the pathetic excuses you throw at your parents for your piss poor performance. It sounds callous, but I was the teacher who would stay for 90 minutes after school to help you catch up, to help fix your project for another class, or even to listen to you cry about your parents' divorce. If I caught you goofing in class instead of doing your work, I would warn you a couple times, email your parents, and then wait and see if they even gave a shit. If they didn't, I would let you keep digging that hole until you were hip deep in water and begging for a ladder. And then I would toss you a rope instead. You could still climb it if you tried hard enough, but a lot of kids would just cry until that hole caved in and buried them. I also utilized my school's online grading slash assignment system for nearly all of my assignments, which meant I could document when a student looked at the assignment. How long it took them, etc. All of this allowed me to see what my students were doing, when they did it, and also if they were plagiarizing. This was one of the tools that helped me make important decisions about leniency, and also allowed me to say things at conferences such as, of course the test was hard, your child didn't attempt the nine homework assignments until 11 PM, the night before the test. Being able to prove that a student wasn't trying made it impossible for blame to be laid unfairly at my feet. It also meant the worst kids avoided my class, bonus. However, this year, something magical happened. Every other year, I would get a wave of kids who just wanted to screw around and blame everyone else for doing poorly. At the end of the year, students would shit talk me, my class sizes would drop the following year, then I would receive high praise from those kids, so everyone would sign up, so on and so on. But this year, not only did I get a giant wave of knuckleheads, but they came with parents who loved to make trouble. I had already heard tales of some of these parents. Other teachers were just dying to hear stories about our interactions, because these parents were very much entitled. They would name drop lawyers when they didn't get their way, try to badger teachers into giving their kids extra credit, and would largely deny any wrongdoing on their kids part. These were the parents who would get called in because their student was busted cheating, then accused the teacher of making the class too hard, therefore validating their students need to cheat. So about these knuckleheads. It was a group of roughly seven senior boys who all shifted their schedules to be in the same period with each other. The other teachers could not believe that I had all of them at the same time, but I just shrugged it off. Every week, the staff lounge was dying to know how I dealt with their shenanigans, but for the most part, I had shut down most of their shit from day one. I actually got along very well with them, despite their constant goofing, because they had mastered the ability to appear busy and didn't distract my other kids. Then came the first group project. My class size was just right for seven groups of four to form. The idiot collective formed two groups of four, by pulling in a kid who had been absent on the first day of the project. These two groups crashed and burned on this project super hard for several reasons, but the biggest were that. A, day fucked around during class time and B, put off a two-week assignment until the weekend before and then dumped all the work on everybody else, which resulted in everybody doing minimal effort. I handed out the shit grades and was immediately pulled into parent conferences with several of them. One at a time, obviously. Every meeting was the same. My kid did all the work, so he doesn't deserve a bad grade. Or. My kid didn't understand the assignment. To which I handed over my hyper-specific rubric, which is a checklist for how I grade things, I never wanted to be accused of grading based on not liking a kid. These largely went like this. My kid did all the work and I don't think it's fair it should hurt his grade. I would answer with, Here is the work your student turned in. Here is my rubric which I printed and emailed to your student the day the project started. As you can see, I have itemized the grading for ease of use. I would be happy to go over the grade your student earned. Then the entitled parent would read through all the evidence, look at their kid and ask. Where are the missing parts? The lazy entitled student would say. Oh. My group members were responsible for that. I would then jump in and add that I can't grade what I never received, so I can't reasonably just raise their kids grade. Sorry. Now, good news for all my students. I make assignments worth more throughout the semester with the idea that kids who screw up early on can make it up later by working hard. I seed extra credit throughout the semester and all of these parents are disgruntled, but happy to hear that their entitled embryo can still get an A in my class. Now, the end result of these meetings was that it clearly wasn't my fault. Remember, I had all this data to prove that I made every effort to contact everybody, etc., so it must be the other kid's fault. So these parents all decide that their perfect angel is no longer allowed to work with their previous group mates. Like a cancer, this failure of friends distributes through the rest of the class. Like the genius that I am, I make my students write a group contract for every project that details who does what and when it is due. Why is this important? Because the contract provides me the documentation necessary to allow me to dismiss a bad group member. Plus give them a zero without their parent shitting all over my day. So here is where the problem begins manifesting. These seniors begin bouncing from group to group like cancerous ping-pong balls, wreaking havoc. I let students choose their groups, so these seniors are desperately integrating with anybody that will have them. Because of my class side, every group has at least one coddled child to deal with, and these children just end up rotating, until all of my students have worked with one of these seniors at some point. Now I am getting constant complaints from parents of other kids about these boys. Their kid wanted a good grade, which means they ended up doing all the work while the senior slacked. This is usually after the fact, at which time I bring up I would love to yank that leech out of your grade pool, but you have to use the contract. Students don't want to say anything because they fear retribution from the seniors, but I can't do anything because I will be accused of harassment. The contract can provide me with a leverage I need to prove that these kids were doing no work, because these seniors have been playing their parents for years. I make my class utilize Google Docs. Because the changes are time-stamped. No joke, I've had students produce all the work the morning of a parent meeting to try and lie their way out and make me look like a piece of shit, but that time stamp is a godsend. Luckily, my class is balanced. A shitty groupmate can make things hard, but not undoable and parents are appeased that I have an out for their kid, but disappointed that their kid doesn't use it. Every time I announce a group project is on the way, some of these seniors sucker up to the other kids, to the point that it is expected that a spot will be made for them. I'm talking buying kids lunch, bringing them gifts, etc. Seriously, the day before a group project starts, all of the seniors now sit at separate tables from each other so that they could pull the I'm already here, let's be in a group card, which works most of the time. The strain on class morale is difficult, but I am biding my time. The other students are grabbing at extra credit opportunities constantly so that their grade can absorb the blow. And parent complaints are completely mitigated because I am still offering every chance for success. My principal has a copy of my syllabus in his computer, so that he can quote student policies that the parent signed off on. Not uncommon for him to hear. I don't read that shit, so it doesn't apply, but he reminds them that the clause above the signature line says. My signature denotes that I have read this document in its entirety and agree to abide by all the rules. If you ever become a teacher. Find an awesome boss like this and stick by their side. So I have seven slothful seniors, but I shall name the worst of these Larry, Curly, and Mo. The fallout affects all of them, but these three are the ones whose parents have a boner for making trouble. Every time they bully a teacher into compliance, I imagine they sit around a smoking room with cigars and cognac, laughing at how they got their way yet again with a lowly teacher. I know that anything I do will be heavily scrutinized once the grades start falling and I need to be able to shrug it off because I have other shit to do. And I refuse to be the smiling topic of discussion in their celebratory circle jerk. However, a special note about Larry, since he turned 18. His parents now travel nonstop and are impossible to reach. Larry is now just a huge douche, because his parents no longer care about what he does. I closely monitor their grades in my class, but also in others. This may sound sketchy, but I routinely do this with any of my students who struggle with the material, so that I can identify if the issue is my class or all of their classes. Students have been known faking their grades using inspect element, and I got tired of hearing, but they have A's in their other classes. Because then I look like the piece of shit. Anyway, after a check, I speak with the other teachers. It isn't hard to find out that these boys are doing minimal work in other classes, and I actually discover that Larry has been finding ways to get other kids to do the work for him and then disseminating it among his friends. Other teachers have been bullied into lowering test percentages in their class, and guess what? He and his friends are enrolled in these classes. Despite bombing these tests, HW and project grades give them a comfortable cushion so that most of them are floating at low Bs. I can't prove this, they are using Snapchat. But when I bring it up with their teachers, the teachers don't feel like trying to prove it and duke it out with the parents. Now, they are gaming other classes for minimal effort. However, their only recourse in my class is to keep rotating through groups and leaching off of their hard work to maintain Cs and Bs, and the other kids are too nervous to utilize the group contract to get them fired. Remember how I mentioned that I steadily increase the value of my assignments to keep kids working and give them a chance to fix their grades? Well, on a random day in class, hey everybody, I was looking in the schedule and realized that your last project before finals may stress you out unnecessarily. Would anybody mind if I dropped it? My class, tired of getting banged on group assignments. Nope, drop it, best teacher ever. So I added, okay, well just so you know, I'm going to move our next project back a couple of weeks and extend the deadline by a week. Also, since I canceled the last project, this means that the next project will now be worth roughly 20% of your final grade. So do your best. Screwing this up could kill your grade. Everybody in class was like, whatever. So in one step, I have inflated this assignment and also moved it. I send out an email to parents and students letting them know about the change to the syllabus and the assignment. Get no responses other than happiness that I am removing stress from the end of the semester, etc. I actually did this primarily because another teacher, who was a huge douchebag, plunked down a monster project that same week, and I knew it would burn out my students prior to finals, so figured a break was in order. Win-win for me, really. Now why did I move it? Enter my maniacal laughter. The Friday before the project started, I announced at the start of class, I am introducing the project now so that you can get into groups today and we can do it first thing Monday morning without delay, since this project is so important. This announcement elicits a room full of shit eating grins. Why? It was senior ditch day. Our school didn't condone a ditch day, so the kids tried their best to keep it a secret. But I found out a month in advance. All seven of these kids were absent from class, which meant that I had just given the entire room freedom from these dead weights. Immediately, groups are formed, and even better, I had a couple kids transfer out of my class at semester which meant, numbers-wise, these knuckleheads will have to work on this last group project together, in two groups. I emphasized that everyone needed to get to class as soon as possible, so that they could start as soon as attendance was called. My original intention was to light a giant fire under all seven of these chumps, to get them to actually put in the effort they had neglected to do all year. Most of them had grades in the low C range, except for one in the low Bs. As a bonus to all my students, I put an extra credit portion on this project so that they could recoup their early semester losses, but also allow these seniors to do very well if they put in the effort. This wasn't meant to be a revenge tail, but an attempt to give them one last lesson and responsibility. Before the end of the day, I send out a parent-slash-student notification that the project had been started and that any absent students needed to contact their classmates to establish groups before Monday morning. This was important, as you'll see. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. Immediate fallout. The next Monday, the seniors come traipsing in seconds before the bell to discover, that there are only two tables to sit at. Whatever, they take their seats. I start with, okay, everybody has a copy of the rubric. So go ahead and get started. Rest of class, immediately pulls out the rubric. Seniors, looking around frantically, the seniors quickly realize that they have been played and the arguing starts. First thing that happens is that Larry, Curly, and Moe decide that they now belong with whoever they happen to be sitting with and scoot their chairs over to sit with different tables. I catch this right away and tell them that the groups are already at maximum size, four people per group. The other four seniors are already fighting with each other because they know that none of them will actually do any work. Larry, who thinks he's God's gift to everybody, tries to sweet talk me and his group into special privileges and allowing a group of five. Now, I see some of the other kids wavering and I know that Larry is putting pressure on them to argue his case. I designed this project for specifically four people and had a job for each one, but I extended a separate offer. I would let him join, but since there will be five of them, I expect double the work. Literally. I told them they would have to do the project twice. Larry tries to argue, but I point out the roles I have established and inform him that if four people could do it once, having five should make it easier to do it twice. Sounds like a dick move on my part, but I have now intimidated the other kids into saying hell no. And even have them put it to a vote. Unsurprisingly, Larry is the only one who votes that this is a good idea, and when the other kids catch wind of my offer, they physically shoo off the other seniors trying to pull this deal as well. You will all be delighted to hear that the rest of the period for my seniors is spent arguing over who will work with who. They end up forming three groups and are not my head, make sure they have the rubric, and then wish them the best of luck. Being the smart teacher that I am, I email Curly's parents and Mo's mommy that they have chosen to work with each other. Mo's mommy shows up to argue with me all the time, but has quickly learned I won't take her shit. At a previous meeting, she even laid into Mo and told him, I'm tired of fighting all these battles with your teachers, and I'm starting to think that you're the problem. But I think this was just for show. Curly's parents email me back and say they will make sure Curly writes a group contract. You see, Curly has sold himself as the best student ever, and clearly he will do the work and fire his classmates. Mo's mommy immediately requests a meeting with me. For school policy, I do not have to respond to an email for 48 hours. I wait until hour 47 and email a noncommittal. I would love to meet, when are you available? And wait for a response. I then wait another 48 hours to inform her of a time the following week that works for me. Now, some of the other senior parents have emailed me angrily demanding why I let their kids choose to work with the bad kids again. I had to inform them that I didn't expect all of them to be absent. Immediately, some of my seniors get burned at home because they ditched and their parents tell me, just try to help them pass, which I agree to. Some of them need this class for graduation, after all. Mo's mommy, on the other hand, shows up ready to wage war. She starts by demanding that I put Mo in a different group. I decline, because the project has now been going on for a week and wouldn't be fair. She demands that I add into another group. They're all full and students have already done the lion's share of the work. She demands that I let him work by himself with an extension. I gladly offer him an extension and slide a copy of the rubric over to him and he goes white. At this point, he knows that he is never planning to do any of the work. In fact, I know that his group hasn't even started. I have a copy of their group contract which was hastily scribbled in pencil with no due dates on it. He starts arguing with his mom that he would rather work with his friends and that he is upset that he got stuck in this situation. Contemplating this, she accuses me of deliberately waiting until that date is screwed the seniors over. After all, it was a school-sanctioned event and I'm being a jackass about it and she'll go to the board with her story. Wrong. The joy I get from all of my prep work is shutting down bullshit like this. All seven of the seniors hung out on ditch day at her house and told her that the principal had given them the day off. Even better, they called in and pretended to be their own parents, so that it was an excused absence. He is immediately busted and his mom flips her switch and jumps all over him. You see, she can keep pressing me on this issue, but I now have evidence that he pretended to be his own dad and this is a suspensible offense. I buy myself into her graces by telling her that I had no idea that senior ditch day was that Friday, but I gave her kid a free extension on the homework that was due, because I thought seniors deserve their own traditions, blah blah blah. She buys it. Also, I can prove that I emailed him and her and gave them plenty of notice before Monday morning that they needed to pit groups before something like this happened. Obviously, once I found out about ditch day I tried to give her precious treasure a heads up, but I don't know why he didn't take it. She makes him open his email. My email is sitting there, unopened, and I have won this battle. She thanks me and takes him home. Class morale is super high, unless you are one of the seniors. A week before the project is due, neither group has actually started and the HMS class average is about to hit an iceberg. The project comes due. It comes as no surprise that my enterprising seniors have turned and easily some of the worst work ever. One group got into a text argument the weekend before it was due and made one of the kids do all the work. Moe and Curly are in this group. The other group, with Larry, has also turned in a steaming pile. I make sure to grade these two projects first because I know the fallout is going to be big. All the seniors dropped at least one letter grade. A couple dropped too. This is four weeks before graduation. Larry appears to take his F minus in stride, they got something like a 10% on it. So I know he's plotting something. Curly's parents demand a meeting and so does Moe's mommy. Curly's parents are super upset that they got a bad grade and demanded to know why. What they didn't know was that I had already met with a student who did the entire project, Torley, and his parents. I informed Curly's parents that I had seen the text exchange between the seniors that pretty much ended up with. You fucking do it. Curly refused to turn over his phone to his parents for confirmation. I also show them Curly's project and hand over the rubric. Mom and dad are not happy. You see, Curly has been blaming everyone else for his mistakes since the dawn of time and his parents have bought in completely. Until today. Dad pointedly asks. Which part did you do? And this causes Curly to spout actual tears. I then pull up a spreadsheet of all of the group project scores from the year, with no student data, and have highlighted his scores, which are among the worst. The purpose of this was to use data to prove that their son, frankly, never does the work. Curly is absolutely destroyed by this. His parents kick him out of the conference because they are tired of his excuses and ask me what they can do. I tell them I would be happy to offer one-on-one tutoring and that he can still pass the class if he does his homework and gets a B on the next exam. They agree to this, we all shake hands, and they leave. Curly's story largely ends here. He never shows up to tutoring, and I email his parents. After three emails, his dad finally responds with. His mom and I have decided that he needs to learn to be an adult and are leaving him to his own devices. Thank you for your efforts. Curly will spend the rest of the semester doing little to no work. Because he is grounded at home, he is now just watching YouTube videos on his phone during school. The ripple effect is glorious. Because now Curly is doing this in all of his classes. I speak with his teachers and they all email that he is quit doing work in class and get the same reply I did, rather than the vehement responses they are used to. When Curly fails his classes, he's still graduates, but his parents have informed him that they are no longer paying for his college, and it's time to get a job. Mo's mommy flips her shit and demands answers. Unfortunately, Mo is in the same group as Curly. And she gets the same answers from me. Strangely enough, once she's exhausted every effort and attempt to somehow blame me for this, she admits that she knew Mo was part of bullying the lone senior. And that he should be ashamed of himself. She deliberately tried to play me, but outed herself once she knew that I already knew everything. Super annoying, but I agree to help tutor him one on one, which makes her happy. Long term fallout, Mo's mommy is emailing me nonstop. Is my son doing his work, did he get help with his homework, etc? But she knows better than to fight with me. Larry is unusually chipper, and is no longer doing his work. I find out that Larry is supposedly going to a college, where he just needs to maintain his GPA over a super low number. He claims an F in my class won't change anything, so I make sure he doesn't distract the others. Mo shows up only occasionally, but strangely enough. Larry pops in, just to say hi, whenever Mo is getting help. I can't fathom why he does this, but suspect he is up to something and already have a backup plan in place. You see, Mo's mommy is nuts, and I make sure that there's always another person in the room with me when I tutor him. Anyway, Mo's mommy is constantly checking in. I start waiting 48 hours between emails, cause I can, and she starts dropping by in person unannounced to check on him, me. She's been acting cagey lately and I'm starting to suspect something. I even found out what it is. It's fucking Larry. Larry is a friend of Mo's, so he's been in her home feeding her made up stories, to convince her that I've been emotionally abusing Mo when other students aren't around. Stuff like I was calling him a retard after school, etc. and then telling her, you can even have the school check the cameras to see that I'm there. This starts a whole thing where she is now demanding answers from admin. But, Mr. FighterJet is smart. Admin asks me about details regarding my interactions with Mo and I end up sitting down with my principal, Mo. And Mo's mommy. She details that Mo is struggling, might not graduate. And that she believes that I have singled her kid out for abuse and once his grade raised. You see, Mo is dumb and lazy, and his mom is just as bad. When Larry went to her with his story, she never bothered talking about it with her own son. He just agreed and went along with it, so I asked Mo point blank to please describe what has been said during our sessions and then offer to leave the room. So that he can tell the principal without me there. She tells me to stay, because she wants me to hear from her son what I've done to him. What neither of them knew was that I was a mentor teacher. That meant I had a first year teacher as my mentee. Not a student teacher, but a new hire that works with a veteran teacher to learn the ropes of our school. And I had her working on grades and such in my room after school. On the days I agreed to meet Mo. She was young, so Mo thought she was another student and never questioned it, and couldn't even remember that she was in there. My principal already had statements from her detailing my interactions with Mo, and Mo was unable to give any actual details and suddenly forgot what had been said to him. This lands her in hot water with admin, and she blames the whole thing on Larry and becomes visibly upset that she fell for such a stupid ruse. This results in an email cautioning teachers from being alone in a room with either student. Suddenly, after school help evaporates for both, but hey, I always have someone in my room, so whatever. After that meeting, Larry is now suddenly super concerned about his grade. I rationalize that he was hoping to burn me out of my job and then use the fallout to get a free passing grade. Obviously it doesn't work, so fuck Larry. I have kids who actually want to succeed. My free days are now on days I know he works, and he never shows up for tutoring anyway. Now that other teachers are hesitant to meet with him. He is unable to cut deals to raise those grades either. Mo's mom makes a last-ditch effort and tries to convince me that the parents of the seniors have scheduled a meeting with my boss to have me fired. All for giving their kids a bad grade and that she would be willing to put in a good word for me if I meet with her first. I'm sitting next to the principal when I get this email. Through an app on my cell phone, and he has no idea what she's talking about. I tell her I'd be happy to meet everybody, but that I would probably eat my lunch during such a meeting and that I hoped people didn't mind the smell of fish. I got a. No, seriously, they are threatening to sue you. But feigned stupidity and informed her that I couldn't be sued for eating fish during a meeting. She now realizes I give zero fucks about anything and can't be threatened. Again, there's nothing she can do because I am simply following policy. The last few weeks are frantic for these seniors. One by one they fall because they've done little to no work for a couple years now and they have no idea how to apply themselves. Other teachers are emboldened by how hard I shut them down and finally hold them accountable. A few of them just barely managed these in my class. The rest fail. I get a few last second squeaks of. What can I do to raise my grave? But have now documented that none of them attempted the extra credit assignments and that was their chance. It's hard for a parent to shit on you when you can prove you actually tried to give their student extra credit and then prove they never open the assignment online. These guys are now failing some of their other classes. A couple have breakdowns in my class and leave crying. Their friendships are fracturing with each other because they now all hate each other for what happened, which they will get over during the summer. My last test came and I made it an online multiple choice test. It was easy enough to have the questions and answers shuffled in random order, meaning they couldn't cheat off each other. You see, I knew for a long time that they would sit next to each other to try and cheat on the exam, and Larry had blown a ton of money on a tutor to try and carry his friends. This throws them all off, and when Mo's mommy accuses me, again, of trying to trick our kid with a much harder test. It was easy enough to shoo her away with a simple email. Larry passes the exam, but his grade moves up to a meager D minus. If you're still here, congratulations on dealing with my wall of text and blabbering. Here are the results. Of these seven seniors, one didn't graduate and had to transfer school. His parents were embarrassed that they paid to fly the whole family out for a graduation that he didn't get to take part in. Two of the seniors lost all of their scholarships and could no longer attend the schools they wanted. Their fallback plan was to attend the same school together and become roommates, which they did with three of the other seniors, including Mo. I do have some after stories, because I still work at this school and occasionally hear from the kids who graduated. Larry's college was not happy with his final GPA. I'm not sure what his long game was, but it sucked. The college kicked him out before he could even start. And I found out his huge web of lies extended to his parents too. He toured Europe over the summer and tried to surprise his parents by coming home, instead of going to school. Apparently they kicked him out immediately after because they were selling their house to get a condo somewhere else. Remember, they travel for work all the time now so wanted to downgrade. Last I heard, he made up a story that he joined the military but got released due to a made up illness. I say made up because I heard this tale from three different people, and each one was given a different disease. Curly's parents relented and decided to pay for Curly to go to college after all. Curly got kicked out halfway through the year, got busted more than once for underage consumption, and then kicked him to the curb after living at home for a year and refusing to get a job. Last I heard, he works in a vape shop. Mo went to school and used his book Smarts to try and pay other kids to do his work for him. His mommy is rich. When that failed, he faked his grades to get his mom to keep footing the bill. Eventually the school kicked him out and he moved back home. The story his mommy told a friend of hers, who I ran into at a school function, was that he decided that he would rather be an entrepreneur than go to college and that he bought a drone to film weddings with. Last I heard, he was acting as a distributor for his weed dealer but had moved up to selling acid on the side. His mommy thinks he is working weddings. One senior went to college with his friends and immediately realized he needed to change. He quit hanging with his friends and, last I heard, graduated with honors in a lucrative field. He emailed me wants to thank me for challenging him in HS because it prepared him for college, so that was nice. That's it, the end. Thanks for staying with me and if you ever had a teacher you loved, send them an email, we love hearing from our children. My advice to new teachers is be the teacher you needed when you were young and always have emergency snacks for kids who don't have food. People who say I'm horrible and should quit teaching. Oh no, my feelings. Internet people who don't like me. Get fucked. You're part of the problem. Everything I did was to protect the interests of the other 20 kids in that class, who wanted to work hard and learn and those seniors had every opportunity to improve their lot in life. I spent nine months counseling students whose grades had tanked because of these yahoos and nine months of being begged by parents not to let their kids work with these boys. I saw a chance and took it. I understand there will be a very angry minority who are just certain I am a huge piece of shit based on how I treated a group of seniors. To reiterate, it's impossible to judge my entire career by my efforts to hold a small group of students accountable for making everyone miserable. I'll leave you with this. I love my kids to death. As a former teacher myself, this makes me all warm and fuzzy. I had several parents and students like this and it made life so difficult. One parent loved to send me several pages of text in caps lock telling me I was mistreating her child who had ADHD. She loved to tell me I had no idea what it was like to have a disability and I was trying to fail him. He had extra time to do every single assignment and I came in early and stayed late to work with him when he asked but usually Mommy did his homework. The principal didn't care though. She was extra pissed when I told her I knew exactly what it was like because surprise I also have ADHD. Her whole face fell. One of seven is pretty good. I'm sure you've impacted more than that over the years but definitely the problem children are the most satisfying in that way. I still remember one of the students I impacted like it happened yesterday. I taught HS English and I had one student who started the year with like a fourth grade reading level. Less him, he tried but he struggled and he got frustrated about it. He liked to mess around in class probably to cover for the fact that the other kids called him stupid for not reading well. He'd crack jokes and do silly stuff but he was never malicious or anything like that. He also had a home life that was challenging. And I knew he was involved in a gang. So I knew he wasn't going to get help at home. So, we worked on it throughout the year together because he needed to pass the end of year exam or he'd have to repeat the grade. I also started building reading into projects throughout the year because all of my students really needed the practice. Anyway, the whole year we worked on his reading. The last reading assignment of the year, he picked Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. I nearly fell over because if you know her work, it's hard. My senior capstone class on college was on her work and this kid was in 10th grade and not reading at that level. While he read the book, he check in with me, talking about what he read and what he thought about it. It was really over his head, but he seemed to enjoy it. And he liked talking to me about it. I was really proud of him for reading it and of course I'd asked my teacherly questions about what he'd read and he'd go think about it. One day, he comes barreling into my room, excited and out of breath and he announces he finished the book. I'm like, hey, that's great. Well done. And he goes, No, you don't understand. I get it now. Milkman is odysseus. Remember how you made us read the odyssey? About the guy on the boat? Yeah, then these people are the sirens and this person is the witch. You know the one who turned men into animals? My jaw dropped. Straight to the floor. It was equally as shocking because I realized that not only had he been paying attention to our conversations about the book, but he really paid attention in class. He couldn't necessarily write and articulate it as well, yet, but he was listening. The report he turned in was riddled with his usual mistakes, but there was a level of understanding there that just made my heart burst with pride. At the end of the year, he came to me with a small gift and a card and he thanked me for making him read and for helping him find Toni Morrison. He said he was super proud to know there was such great African American authors out there, and he wanted to read more of her work. That was 15 years ago now. I remember that day clear as a bell. I have no idea what happened to him or where he is now, but I hope he is still reading Toni Morrison. Oh, and he did pass the exam. Thank you for enjoying this episode, which was made with artificial love. Subscribe to receive future episodes, and tickle the like button for Good Karma. Do you have any experiences surrounding this topic? Share yours below, I'll join the conversation. And I'll be seeing you in the next one.