Find your faith

Chapter 72: Aptitude Inequality

Daphne's POV
"3 Faith, we're a class of CCA leaders, performers and student councillors," Mr Williams boomed. "And this semester will determine if you're staying back in Secondary 3 or moving onto Secondary 4. Now, I will be conducting weekend lessons for selected students to make sure no one ends up failing the end of year exams. Regardless of aptitude, these are for students that would be in activities that would eat up into our lessons." He then went to the whiteboard, and splashed a list of names.

Crystal, Daphne, Lucas, Ethan, Nicole, Jennifer, Anika, Fiona Chan...

"Is it just me or is the list mainly filled with people from the performing arts?"

"No, I realised something. A lot of people getting these lessons are all leaders of some sort like a CCA leader, or they're performing in the musical."

"Isn't Crystal due to go to China? Going for the cultural exchanges would eat up into lessons."

"Mr Williams, this isn't fair," Crystal snapped. "If you really want to give us remedial lessons, give everyone in 3 Faith remedial lessons. You're excluding the people that actually need the remedial lessons, you're only using these lessons as a safety net for those in extracurriculars and care about their academics. You don't care about the people that actually need it."

Mr Williams rolled his eyes in Crystal's face, and pulled out an excel sheet on his laptop. It showed the list of failures, marked by little ticks by term. He then showed us three extra criteria and then the result, namely leadership, cultural exchanges and the musical. "I care about all of your grades, and I'm not letting your little activities get into the way of your O Levels, ok? I zoomed your form teacher and I spent all of my weekend creating this. Appreciate this, ok?" Too scared to say anything, we all nodded nervously and looked at one another, not knowing if keeping mum or rebelling would do 3 Faith better.
Crystal's POV
3 Faith classroom
"So sin 34 divided by cos 58 is tan 41.9. Remember to always convert it to 1 decimal place at the end!"

I seriously think this is unfair! He hasn't changed his teaching method from his normal lessons, still choosing to ramble on and on rather than actually helping understand what's going on. No Kahoots, no whiteboard work, no attempt to engage us. Must I mention what pissed me off more? He did not give a single break, causing all of us to lose focus halfway through the lesson and dozing off. Rather, it was alternating between written individual work and his rambling. And now, he wasn't going to allow us any form of clarification because "he wanted us to get serious if we wanted to keep these opportunities."
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Crystal: honestly this is so unfair! If he is so keen on remedial, maybe he should've gotten the whole class to stay back on Saturday mornings together.

Ethan: yes! We actually need to have a word with the teachers so that all of 3 Faith gets the help they need. I can't believe we have weekend lessons, so if he wants the lessons we should have 2 1-hour sessions. On two separate days! And it's either everyone gets the remedial, or only the students that failed the last 2 WAs. In a way, he's being biased against the students with glamorous opportunities and those that don't, not our A Math performance.

Crystal: Right, we should write a proposal to the student management team to stop Mr Williams from being biased and torturing all of us for nothing! I'd rather be practicing the piano right now than wasting two extra hours on extra lessons that are like the ones during normal hours.
To be continued