Twisted Smiles

XII

The week passed by rather quickly, much to my disappointment. While everyone else was anticipating the weekend, students and teachers alike, I dreaded the hours that lead to it.

I didn't have a great week, on the contrary; the school year was coming to an end and that was the time when we teachers had the most work to do, or so I was discovering. Students who had procrastinated with their assignments during the year were now desperately trying to make up for the time they've lost while harassing teachers for help to raise their grades.

I dreamed of a day when I could tell the students there was nothing I could do for them and that it wasn't my fault they had partied all year and did everything but their assignments. Sadly Mr. Kozlov, our school principal, prohibited us from doing that. He'd told us we had to do whatever was in our power to help those who wanted. In my opinion, though, if the student left everything to the last minute then this meant they didn't want to move on to the next grade with the rest of their classmates – but then again who was I to point this out to my boss? It was times like these where I knew better to keep my big mouth shut so I wouldn't lose my job; and losing my job was not something I could afford doing right now. Or ever.

It wasn't a surprise to me that the only students that were failing my class were the twins, Michael and Carter. All my other students had average grades. Even Nathan wasn't doing so bad, considering the fact that he is always absent and has never handed in a single homework since the year had started. He was lucky he is very smart and can get high grades on tests, which compensates for everything else he doesn't do - or else he'd be failing miserably.

I had spent the whole week staying an extra hour after class to try and help the twins, but it seemed like the more I tried, the worse they'd get. It didn't matter how many times nor how many different ways I've tried to explain, they simply wouldn't get it.

"Let's go over it one more time," I said to them on Friday. "In the examples, 'I want to buy a phone, but I don't have enough money,' 'we went to Paris and visited the Eiffel Tower,' or 'I know the man who stole the watch', which sentence is a subornative clause?"

They both seemed deep in thought, as if mentally flipping their options around in their heads as one would flip a quarter in the air for a long moment. I was starting to consider repeating myself, afraid they'd forgotten the question - I had repeated myself so many times I was beginning to feel like I had been captured and replaced by a robot – until finally the mental quarter in Carter's head chose a side and he spoke up.

"The last one."

The corners of my lips slowly rose upward until my smile turned into a huge grin, "that is correct, very good Carter."

"Thank you, teacher," he muttered timidly.

"Ohhh, I get it now. So this means that when the sentence is split in two and it doesn't make sense it's a subornative clause because it needs a compliment, right?" Michael asked.

"Exactly!" I basically screamed. I didn't even care that he was repeating the exact same thing I had explained nearly a hundred different times as long as they finally got it. My smiles were long gone and my patience had been running thin by this point. All I wanted to do was to go home, get under the covers with a mug of hot cocoa and watch a movie, but that seemed very distant at the moment. It was as if the time would never pass.

"So, what you're saying is, for a subornative clause we can take the sentences apart and still understand its meaning?" asked Carter.

I mentally slapped myself on the face and took a deep breath. It was useless. Just when I was having the slightest hope that they were getting it, five minutes later it would all fall apart. How can he have just given me the right answer and still not understand the main reason of it? And there was no point if only one of them understood it, if I'd have to be stuck with the other until he passed anyways.