Self-selected Blog #2: Why are you here?

If you knew anything about my summer school class this year, you would know that I teach Biology I and that I only had 2 students. The first student Z, who I mentioned in my previous blog, obviously needed extra help and detailed detention. Let's call my 2nd student C. C was the complete and total opposite of Z. C was that student who already knew this information and could potentially be a problem if you didn't find anything to challenge his mind. C participated in discussions, he, for the most part, did his homework. For the longest time, my coworkers and I could not understand why C was here. C was an exceptionally bright student. I loved to direct thought questions towards him, just to see what conclusions he could formulate. C passed all of this test and was usually in the 80% plus range. I noticed these trends throughout summer school. On Friday, after he had just achieved a 91% on his final exam, I had to ask him the question that I had been wondering about the entire month, "Why are you here?" C looked at me and gave me that little smirk he always has when he's off in another world in the class and said, "I don't know." I responded with I don't know either. I told him he was a bright student was great to have in class, so again, "Why are you here." After seeing I wasn't going to let up on the question he finally told me the story of how he used to get in trouble with his peers (yes, he said "peers") in bio class. He proceeded to inform me that he got blamed for many classroom interruptions caused by his peers. He said that his passed all his tests, but his behavior kept him from passing the course. I told him that I'm sure that what he told me was not the whole story and I'm sure that he did interrupt his bio class a few times. I told him that there was no reason that he should be in summer school and next year he needs to act like he has some sense. I didn't have some big threat that I could follow up on or anything, so I left it blank and just said that I better not see him here next year with my most meanest and sternest teacher persona. He looked at me then looked away and said, "Yes mam." He knew what I meant, and I don't expect to see him next year.