Have you ever gotten a grade that wasn’t based on your performance, but rather based on how you look?

As a teacher, you should have your eyes and ears open at all times and be mindful of what you say or do around your students. You don’t know what goes on at home or with their parents, and keeping your eyes peeled can make a huge change for a kid who just needs a little bit of attention, and maybe even compassion.

If the teacher in the story below had done that, she would have made her student feel so bad about something she can’t control. 

It doesn’t take much to notice that one of your student comes to school with the same battered sneakers every single day, or that their school uniforms look quite rundown. It shouldn’t be hard to put two and two together and determine that this student’s parents’ financial state is not the best. If this teacher had noticed that, she might not have failed her student in the assignment because she «didn’t dress professionally enough.» You can do better than this, Ms. Whatever.

The most infuriating part of this story, posted by the student in an online community, is how hard the parents worked to make their daughter as professional as possible with the resources they had. They knew that it wasn’t perfect, but they did their best, and failing her for it just doesn’t seem fair.

You would expect a teacher to understand that there is something deeper under the surface, but unfortunately, this teacher won’t even learn from this occasion. Because the student was too ashamed to tell her parents about the failed grade, and the teacher was never confronted over her unfair grading system.

Hopefully, there are teachers out there who know better than this one…