Citizenship

by Maneesh Sethi

What is citizenship? In your school, it may be called participation, work ethic, whatever. Basically, it’s just a way for school officials to try and make you work hard in class because it shows up on your transcript. Believe me, one of the most annoying things ever is to look at your transcript and see straight A’s in your grades column and also see B’s or worse in the citizenship column. I’ve wondered how someone can be off-task if they are succeeding in a class.

There are three citizenship classifications for teachers:

1) Teachers who actually record the amount of times you raise your hand in class.

2) Teachers who never tell you to quiet down or stop talking in class, but smack you with a B when the report card comes along.

3) Teachers who plainly don’t give a damn what you do.

Obviously, #3 is your best bet for getting an A in the citizenship portion of the class.

Let’s get straight to the meat of this chapter. We begin with planning before you take the class.

Before School Starts

Before you even start the class, you should find out about all of your teachers. Figure out which ones will be the easy, laid back ones, and which will be the hard-ass-I’m-going-to-make-you-work-hard-even-there-is-no-reason teachers. When you find out who your teachers are (when you get your class schedule), immediately find some students who took the class last year. Ask them questions about the teacher. Some example questions would be

1) What kind of teacher is he/she? (from the list above)

2) How tough is this class?

3) Will the teacher mark me tardy or absent if I am not on time?

Of course, these are only some example questions. I bet you can think of a few more.

If you are a freshman, you might be worried that you don’t know anyone in high school. Just try and meet some sophomores or juniors in your first week of school and ask them these question. You will most likely be able to answer them quicker than you think.

Teacher #1 – Those who record participation

These teachers friggin’ suck. Why it is necessary to count how much you participate is beyond me, and unfortunately, they are the hardest to trick. The secret to getting good citizenship in their class is to simply raise your hand a lot.

Now you may not want to raise your hand a lot. Maybe you just want to go to sleep in class. Well here is what you do. For the first ten minutes or so of class, just raise your hand as much as you can. After you have answered a few questions, she won’t call on you anymore.

When she stops calling on you, watch when the teacher asks a question. Does anyone else put their hand up? If so, put yours up, because there is a good chance the teacher will call on the other person rather than you.

By doing this, you can easily trick your teacher into giving you participation points when you didn’t even know the answer.

By the way, some teachers give you extra credit when you raise your hands. These teachers are awesome, because you can stockpile these points and not have to worry as much about a test, final, or whatever. With these teachers, try and raise your hand as much as you want.

That’s it for teacher #1. In summary, raise your hand at the beginning of class (or for a good part of the year, all the time), until he or she stops calling on you.

Teacher #2 – Those who don’t tell you to be quiet

These teachers are worse than those who tell you to shut up. With these, you have no idea if you are pissing the teacher off or not. The best way to get a good grade in this class is to sit far away from the teacher.

The farther away you sit, the less of a chance the teacher has of seeing you not do your work. Make sure you keep one eye on your teacher. If he or she is looking directly at you, pretend to be working.

Another tip: if you are talking to a friend and your teacher walks by you, immediately begin talking about the homework. For example,if you are in math and you and a friend are talking about a hot girl (or guy) on the other side of the class, and you see your teacher getting within hearing range, say something like, “No dude, the sin of π/3 is √3/2!” or whatever you are studying at the time. Your teacher won’t be as mad if you are talking about your subject than if you are talking about something else.

Ever fallen asleep in class? In this teacher’s class, you have to be careful because you can get in serious trouble if you do. If you are resting your head, at least make it look like you are working, so keep a hand on the pencil, face your homework, and do whatever else it takes to look like you are doing work.

If your teacher catches you talking or not working, all you do is say, “Sorry” and get to work. Real work. The teacher will be watching you for the rest of the class, and you really don’t want to appear off task.

Anyway, that is just about it for teacher #2. Sit as far back as you can, watch the teacher always, and try to pretend like you are always working.

Teacher #3 – Those who don’t care

Teacher #3 is the best teacher of all. Typically in this class, you get an A in citizenship no matter what. It’s easy to tell which type of teacher is a #3 also – if the teacher seems like a nice laid back guy or girl, it will most likely be #3.

The trick to getting an A in this class is simply not to piss of the teacher. You have a lot more freedom to do what you want to do, but you still can’t break anything or make fun of the teacher’s kids. Hopefully, you wouldn’t do these things anyway, but just be safe and don’t act retarded.

There isn’t much to tell about these teachers. A lot of the time, if you get on their good side, you can hang out with the teacher after class and he or she won’t care. They can be really cool.

That’s it for teacher #3. Now we move on to how to raise your citizenship grade if you haven’t followed the above rules.

Getting yourself out of trouble

If you have ever tried to change your actual grade in a class, you may have found it difficult, if not impossible. However, citizenship is completely different. Most (not all, though) teachers wait until that last day of the grading session to issue your citizenship grade, so the trick to getting your grade raised in citizenship is usually to simply be good for the last few weeks before the teacher decides the grades.

I recommend that you work on being a hard worker for the first and last 3 weeks of each semester, at least. Also, if you get progress reports that list your citizenship, you also want to be really good for a week or two before each citizenship grade.

Just being good may not work though. Sometimes, you need to raise that grade at the end, without any doubts. Here is what you do.

If you get citizenship grades on your progress reports and you got A’s on all of those reports before the semester grade, point that face out to your teacher. Show the teacher that you have been good for most of the semester, and therefore, you should get the A. But what if you didn’t get those A’s.

Well, the first thing you can do is lie. This isn’t recommended by me, but you may want to, I don’t know. Most teachers won’t double check their citizenship grades, and if they do, you can always say “Oh, I was wrong, sorry.”

There is a better tactic than lying though. This method, while not foolproof, preserves your honor, sharpens your wit, and gets you citizenship points in the form of pity.

Go up to the teacher one to two weeks before the grades are decided. Ask what your citizenship grade is. If the teacher says A, congratulations, you have won. If the teacher says, “I haven’t decided yet,” you make him or her decide right there. Ask probing questions like “What do you think I will get?” or “What can I do to raise my citizenship grade?” DO NOT leave until the teacher says you got an A. If he or she says you received a B, make sure you get confirmation that your grade can change.

Raising your grade is possible just by asking, “What can I do to raise my grade?” Keep fighting until you get an answer. You have to judge when you are between being forceful and annoying, you obviously want to quit when you are annoying. After you feel that you have made your point, say thanks and leave. From then on, you have to work hard and be good in the class, otherwise your citizenship grade will falter.

So that is basically all there is to citizenship. Just learn to play the teacher following the guidelines above, and never be content with a low grade – you can always get it changed. Good luck!