A Quandary With Grades

Tonight, was the induction of the National Honor Society students at Mueller Park Jr. High School. Michael was nominated, and accepted, but didn't want to attend the induction. He said, "Mom, you know I don't like things like that." So, no pictures, no hoopla, just a little bragging on my blog about his great accomplishment.

Mike struggled a little last year with his GPA. Rightfully so, it was an extremely difficult year for all of us. The girl's thought they were really funny when they nicknamed him Sylvan for letting his GPA drop. Sylvan has made tremendous progress this year and has maintained a 4.0 for each term except this one. In my humble opinion, I think we should re-nickname him Harvard.

This term he is .1 off from having a 4.0. I have REALLY struggled with this, especially because the class affecting his 4.0 was gym. That's right, P.E., Physical Education, whatever you want to call it. I started laughing when he first told me, because of the 3 to 4 hours of baseball per day he is playing at the high school. Not to mention the basketball comp games after baseball. If you are considered a Freshman, shouldn't the hours and hours of baseball practice and games be enough extra-credit to raise your grade .1 in gym?

My initial reaction was to call the gym teacher and give him a piece of my mind. However, I calmly asked Michael if he had talked with him. His answer was, "no". "Are you going to," I asked, "nope". The mother instinct in me wants to fix this for him, but the rational person thinks he should take care of the problem, or learn an important lesson. Maybe, it isn't even fixable at this point, but shouldn't he try? I'm in quite a quandary over this. Should I step in, or should he pay the consequence for not speaking up, or not trying to change his grade?