The Great Medic (discontinued?)

6: Summer Growth

Iruka smiled to himself, waving Naruto goodbye, watching the boy leave the classroom. He stared at the spot where his student had been for a few moments before, begrudgingly, pulling his attention back towards the stack of papers surrounding him. He sighed heavily, letting his head fall against his desk, softly smacking it against the wood; he was going to get a headache for sure.

The end of the year had caught up to him much faster than he'd originally anticipated; the past month crept up on him too fast and then, all of the sudden, it was their last Friday of the school year and tests were given out. It was safe to say that the brown-haired academy teacher was struggling to grade all of the written tests, his only saving grace being the full week after exam day to finish grading all his students' tests - both the written and taijutsu tests - and turn in their test scores to the principal for ranking.

Although Iruka had the top marks of his graduating class - being a part of the top when he graduated - he had never liked the ranking system the academy had in place. It pressured students too much, in his opinion at least, and left them working against each other rather than with each other. Jounin teachers had to rewrite genin behavior once students left the academy, having more teamwork-based training than individual ones.

But, unfortunately, Iruka didn't make the rules so he'd have to suck it up.

As for the rankings the academy used, best marks put you at the top and the worst ones at the very bottom - simple, really. And with rankings only changing at the end of every year, it's even easier to understand. The only thing that can change a student's class rank is their end-of-the-year exam scores - if you scored well, your chance of getting a higher rank is almost guaranteed. The two scores from the written and taijutsu test are averaged together to create one, cohesive score.

For someone who was top ten in his class, Iruka was an advocate for students to have an, at least, high average rank. If the average class size is about twenty-five students, he'd suggest being somewhere between the eleventh and fifteenth rank. It's usually best to stay high average rank so you're one, never left him, and two, struggling to understand a lesson. Though it wouldn't even be so terrible to be anything below there either, the consensus being that anything is better than being... a deadlast.

Iruka lifted his head up from his desk. "That word puts a sour taste in my mouth." His mind cooed out without prompting, moving to continue grading tests.

Students with a rank of five or higher - one being the very best - are considered the 'gifted ones' and are praised by Jounin teachers who hope to gain one of these students for their genin teams. Those who are at the bottom, the last rank of the class, are unfortunately known as the 'deadlasts'. It's a shame that they're considered as such but there's not much a teacher can do as these types of students are usually lazy, irate, and never do their work or listen to lessons.

Over the last two years that Iruka had been teaching this specific batch of students, whose tests lie in front of him untouched, the person who's been the deadlast has been Naruto. This year, though?

Iruka picked up his red gel pen, intent on continuing to work on grading the written tests, circling the last wrong answer on the test he'd been working on. He counted once, then recounting two more times. Dark eyes flitted across the page, setting both his pen and the test down, a surprised smile pulling at his features. And then he laughed. He held his stomach as he laughed some more, tears of joy filling his eyes. A passing teacher gave him an odd look but didn't question it.

Once he'd stopped himself, the academy teacher scrambled for the ranking chart sitting innocently on his desk surrounded by a mess of exam paper. Iruka took his red pen, marking off Kiba's name where it had been in the twenty-fourth spot for forever before doing the same to Naruto's name sitting in rank twenty-five. He took only a moment to swap their names, trying to hold his tears back.