One Way to Make "A's" in English (Cont.)
Screen 2 of 3In fairness to Miss Thomas, I must point out that she recognized others in more positive and favorable ways. Correct answers to a question and oral reports well delivered were always praised. For example, I remember she would quite often say to Sara Tyler or Ethel Jones--two of the better students in the class--"I'm giving you an "A" for that report. It was excellent." Following such a compliment, the teacher would enter the top grade in the roll book by the particular girl's name. But instead of making a capital or block "A," Miss Thomas would hurriedly scrawl a small letter "a" at the appropriate place.
All these things about this harried teacher are still vivid in my memory: she was always carrying those books with the open roll book on top; constantly walking back and forth as she tried to cope with disciplinary problems; assigning "a's" to those who performed well; giving zeros to those misbehaving; and in general reacting nervously to the continual confusion all around her.
But occasionally she would have to put the books and roll book down on some student's desk, in order to write something the blackboard or run after someone who was causing particular trouble. And of course the desks at the front of the room were the closest and most convenient place to leave the books for a few moments.
For some reason, I was assigned one of those front seats a more or less permanent basis. Some of my classmates told me it was because Miss Thomas could keep a closer eye on me up there. They could have been right. I don't know. But for whatever reason, I was always in the front, right-hand corner of the room, very near the board on the side wall where most of the writing was done.
Consequently, whenever the teacher put her armload of books down for a minute or two, my desk was their usual resting place. And when she did that, I could not help but see her open roll book and the various grades she had entered by the students' names. One thing in particular about the grades interested me. I noted that the small letter "a." given to the "good" students was very similar to the small zero (0) put after the names of the students who had given her trouble. In fact, the only difference between them was that the grade of "a" had a little tail at its lower right side. It was also obvious that she made these letter "a.'s" by first drawing a zero (0) and then adding the small tail-- from "o" to "a."
One day as her class roll book lay on my desk in front of me, and while she was writing something on the board, I just "experimented" a little by adding a tail to the zero after my name on her roll. Suddenly the bad, bad zero (o) had now become a very good grade (a). How much better that looked, I thought. Not only did it look good to me in that roll book, I was quite sure it would also look good to my mother later, if it appeared on my report card--an "a" in English for Chester!
When I started this "experimenting," I did not intend actually to change the record permanently. In fact, after I added that tail to the zero with a pencil, I started to erase it. But just as I began erasing, Miss Thomas hurriedly snatched up the whole pile of books and walked away as the class bell rang.
At recess time, I told one or two of my closest friends what I had done, insisting that they not tell anyone else, for I still intended to change the "a" back to a zero (o) by my name. I think they did not tell anyone, but instead they later made the same kind of changes by their own names in the teacher's roll book when she laid her things on their desks. Then the word spread through the student grapevine. "Just add a tail to a zero and you'll have an "a" in Miss Thomas' English class." And several more students did just that. It was now becoming a game.
Forgery -- that's what it was, forgery. But apparently Miss Thomas was not aware of what was going on. For a few days later--about a week before report cards were to come out--she smilingly said to the class as she looked at her roll book that she was very pleased that there were more "a's" for the class than usual. She then complimented us and said she hoped we would continue to improve. Several of us almost laughed but she didn't notice.
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