Me, My Teacher and Lies

Chapter 5

“I can’t take it anymore Mr Greyson –“

“Who is this Mr Greyson you speak of”?

“Urgh Luc then I can’t take it anymore please give me something to do before I go insane”!

“You actually want me to give you work to do”?

“Yes I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing”.

“Okay fine help me grade these papers”.

“I can’t do that it’s unethical”.

“They’re not from your class”.

“But I wouldn’t know how”.

“I’ve got the criteria sheet in the draw if you need it”.

“It doesn’t feel right”.

“Fine do nothing I don’t care this detention after all”.

“Fine” I pulled a chair over to his desk setting it on the opposite side to his and holding out my hand to him he stared at me for a minute before he said anything.

“What”?

“Criteria”?

“You really don’t need it I’m sure you could grade a paper on your own”.

“I’m really not that great at English I like it but I’m just not quite there academically”.

“You’re crazy the essays you gave me were flawless apart of course from text choice on one of them, you were the only student I gave an A to I mean if I was being really picky there are some bad grammatical habits but you’ll get over them eventually”.

“Whatever can I have the sheet please Luc”? His eyes widened and he smiled a little goofily opening his draw and handed me the mark scheme.

“Thanks” I took it from him and started to read the paper I had being careful not to look at the name written on it, I still don’t like the whole me grading another students work especially because I know what I write is personal it’s always personal with literature and you can dress it up with as many quotes as you want but it’s still basically your own opinion. I realised very quickly that this person was in my year group just not my class because that’s what he’d told me at least. This was the homework he’d set for us, this person had chosen to write about ‘Of Mice and Men’ hmm I read that book last year but only because Mr Jacobs are old Lit. teacher made us I know it’s supposed to be a classic and it is a very good book but I never read books that I know are going to end badly and this book screams tragedy from the off so I read it fast like ripping off a bandage, I just figure that there’s enough misery in life already without worrying about something that isn’t real and I would worry. I swear I get so absorbed by books sometimes that I shout at the characters to snap out of whatever they’re doing to start doing what they should be doing they just get on my nerves sometimes, I curse them for not having the information I do to help them and then I toss and turn all night thinking how I would make the plot move if it were up to me. I know it’s weird but it’s me and I can’t help it.

I read through the paper a couple of times circling misspellings and where they left out quote marks and things, it wasn’t bad actually everything they said they backed up with a quote but they didn’t really comment on what the quote suggested in terms of their opinion on parts of the text they chose... I picked up the criteria sheet and read through it pinning it at a C but I wasn’t sure so wrote it pencil the whole time so Mr Greyson could change it if needed so I slid it on to his pile of unread papers so he could grade it again.

“You know you’re really not helping if you’re going to make me grade it anyway”.

“I don’t want to be responsible for upsetting somebody with the wrong grade what if I grade it too low and they thought they did a really good job, or worse if I over shoot it only for you to tell them it was a mistake and they get all sad thinking that for once they did something right” I hadn’t really taken a lot of breath in there so when my rant came to an end I was sort of well breathless. Mr Greyson seemed kind of lost with his usually piercing eyes surprised.