Report Card Salesman

POSTED ON October 27, 2013 BY Shannon Nelson
CATEGORY Africa, Education, Life, Mali, Regions,

Making the education grade in sales

TODAY is Friday the 13th (again) and the last school day before spring break. Of much lesser importance (to a couple of my children anyway), today is school report card day.

My husband and I used to love it when my kids brought their report cards home. It was exciting to see how they were progressing in school, and to have a real measure of their academic performance. Oh how we rejoiced over those "A's" and "B's" in the first few years.

Suffice it to say, times have changed.

My oldest son is fairly casual about his report card. He gets pretty good marks with a minimum of work, but he says I am not to worry about his lack of effort. He's apparently going to make his big push for good marks in Grades 11 and 12, when it really counts.

"Grade 10 is my last year to relax," he says, and judging from the amount of sleep he gets, he is definitely relaxed.

My daughter, on the other hand, is a very conscientious student. She manages her time well, never misses an assignment and is attentive in class. She can't wait for her report card to come home because she knows it is going to be great.

My youngest son is a different story altogether. From the time he first started getting letter grades in school it was apparent to his father and me that his interests lay elsewhere. He is a bright kid; he just doesn't shine in school.

While he may be no academic, the kid is a born salesman. I believe he was in Grade 4 when he single-handedly took up the torch to refurbish the tarnished image of the much maligned "C," and he has been a tireless advocate for all marks less than a "B" ever since. Every time he gets a new report card we have the same conversation: "Remember Mom, a C-plus means good" is how he starts. "That means a C is pretty good."

"In my day, a C-plus was only average" I remark to him, unconvinced.

Smart lad, he quickly refers me to the legend at the bottom of the report card, where in fact, a C-plus is described as good.

"Still" I say to him, "a C leaves a lot of room for improvement."

"Why, yes it does, Mother. And I just know I'm going to improve next term," he says, believing himself completely. "You should know that I did better than a lot of the other guys in my class. I'm considered one of the smart kids."

"By whom?" I ask hopefully, but I get no answer because he is already out the door and on to more important things like his golf game.

As the years have passed, it's become clear to me that for this particular kid, a C-plus is a good mark. I mean, it's all relative right? And relative to his other marks, the C-plus looks pretty good. Besides, in the last year or so he's been pushing the idea that boys start to do well in school at a much later age than girls (I think he got that idea from his big brother), so he's not rushing anything.

"Don't worry, I have a whole lifetime of learning ahead of me," he has been known to cheerfully say to his father and me around report card time.

And, despite getting average grades in school, the kid is a voracious reader. I credit his Grade 6 teacher who last year convinced him to join the reading program at school. Granted, Howard Stern's book Private Parts may not have been exactly what she had in mind, but he embraced it and the reading program with unbridled enthusiasm.

In advance of this reporting session, the boy has tried to refocus my interest in the results of the past term to another element of his report card: the work habits mark. His work habits marks typically range from U (unsatisfactory), to S (satisfactory) with the occasional G (Good), and R for 'rare' in our case. Apparently there is another work habits mark: E for excellent, but since I have never seen one I wouldn't know.

My boy has his share of U's in work habits, but last week he came home beaming with pride and said, "Good news Mom, my work habits marks are really improving. Instead of an 'Unsatisfactory' in English, I think I'm getting a 'high Unsatisfactory' and the teacher says I'm this (making an inch with his fingers) close to a satisfactory.

A high unsatisfactory. Good news indeed.

I'll tell you what. My youngest son has done such an excellent job of selling me on the value of average grades and the unimportance of good grades for boys under the age of 16 anyway, that I am not even worried I haven't seen his final report card for last year. (It was issued in June of 1997.)

Now that's a good salesman. If "sales" was a school subject, he'd get an A for sure.

Originally published in Fall 1997

Shannon Nelson

Shannon Nelson is an accomplished writer, interviewer, and radio and television host, formerly with CFUN, VisionTV, the Biography Channel and CBC Television. Before starting a family in the early 80's, Shannon was a stock broker at Pemberton Securities and Canarim Securities (now Canaccord). She is the mother of CEO.ca founder Tommy Humphreys. More →

pinkynel@gmail.com

Shannon Nelson

pinkynel@gmail.com

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