That's why it's called a grade point AVERAGE.

Like my new haircut?

I got it from the whirling blades of the latest helicopter parents to hover over my head now that the semester is inexorably subsiding like a California mudslide into the onslaught of finality which is known as "end of semester" time.

The question before us, ladies and gentlemen, is if it possible for Sugarplum to increase his semester average 8 percentage points in the next six school days. Never mind that Sugarplum has never come within sniffing distance of the grade that this parent has suddenly just plucked out of the ether as their "dream grade."

Sugarplum has come to after school help sessions 4 times over the entire year. I speak to Sugarplum every single day after class for at least five minutes-- or for as long as I can take his whining about how something is "not fair!" or his wheedling for me to increase his grade on the latest assignment because he "tried really hard"-- as I have my planning period and Sugarplum has lunch. Never mind that I have to repeat every single thing I say to Sugarplum, and yet he still tells his mom that I never told him about deadlines. I actually like Sugarplum, since if you haven't gotten to the point that you can tolerate this behavior, you would go batty as a teacher. But liking Sugarplum and buying the crock he's selling are two different things.

Then mom carped that I hadn't entered two ten point assignments and a paragraph grade. I dropped everything and put them in-- and two other grades, one of them a test and one of them an essay, that Sugarplum bombed (Lady, if you want every single grade in, that's what you're going to get, not to mention that if members of your family wouldn't eat up huge portions of my precious grading time they would have been entered already). I will not fill my remaining time with Sugarplum's class creating extra credit opportunities to drive myself insane-- I have loads of things to do besides answer your sudden blizzard of emails and forty-five minute phone calls. I am wondering if Sugarplum isn't making your life hell at home with that whining and carping and wheedling, but there is nothing I can do about that, either. You poured the bath; now you get to sit in it, even if you've developed a sudden allergy to the bubble bath.

One problem is that Sugarplum is too involved with extracurricular fluff and the Cult That is Marching Band. Another is that his strategy for studying for tests is to come in five minutes before the test and ask me to define and/or explain half the material. No joke. But the claim is that "he tries so hard!"

Sadly, even if I had seen any evidence that this is true in this particular instance, trying hard just sometimes isn't enough. But beyond that, Sugarplum's number one problem is that he has parents who are the Baskin-Robins of excuse purveyors for their child. It's always something, just like Roseanne Roseannadanna so pithily put it.

So, since the semester is already 17 weeks old, the chances of magically raising one's grade to unheard of heights for someone with a 52% test average, is, um, about as likely as my becoming a member of the Swedish Bikini Team (and imagine Jabba the Hutt instead of Princess Leia in that bikini, and you'll be in about the right neighborhood). There are 17 weeks' worth of anchor (and about forty-two grades of varying point values) holding Sugarplum's grade where it is, Ma'am, and if Sugarplum would really have liked to have had his dream grade, perhaps he should have studied more and stopped engaging in conspiracy theories about how the universe was aligned against him. And grow up a bit.

Or invent a time machine and go back in time to start over the semester afresh. Grades are not magic numbers that mysteriously evaluate your child. They are not a judgment of your child as a person. They DO represent the amount of understanding your child has demonstrated. And Sugarplum has not demonstrated the knowledge representative of that dream grade. Unfortunately, it's time to wake up. He'll be fine. You'll be fine. Your kid is not you.

But if you want something, try earning it.