Hello, I’m a student in a small town in Georgia about an hour north of Atlanta called Calhoun. I am the valedictorian and STAR student of the 2015 senior class. My AP Literature teacher showed us My Fair Lady and asked us to take notes on it so that we could write a comparative essay on the movie and the novel, Frankenstein. There was no prior notification that we would be graded on our notes, we were simply told that they would be ours for writing our comparative essay, yet two days later the entire class is freaking our because we all received 40’s and 0’s on our notes, which dropped my grade from a 94 to an 89, while her other AP Lit class was not graded for their notes from the first half of the movie. When we went to her class that day she proceeded to explain how terrible our note taking ability was and how she was not going to accept that level of work. After being lectured for a good 10 minutes I spoke on behalf of the class and told her that “We were under the assumption that the notes would be for personal use and therefore were not meant to be taken and graded on whatever scale she came up with.” She proceeded to tell me that even if they were for personal use, mine along with the rest of the classes were terrible, so after being insulted I explained that in this situation the comparisons are so evident between the movie and the book that I did not need to take detailed notes and was simply making a light framework to help me remember what I was going to write about. I also told her it’s ridiculous to grade the class on some rubric she randomly came up with while she was grading personal notes of ours and that to give us such horrid grades that destroyed our overall grades isn’t right.
She proceeded to tell me that her name was on the door which gave her the right to do as she pleases and that if I couldn’t handle the class that I shouldn’t be in AP (which is a preposterous statement seeing as that I am an AP Scholar with Distinction and Honors and already had made a 5 on AP Language & Composition and therefore already had the credit I would get if I passed the AP Lit exam), I told her that I was forced into that class because my AP score was too high to sign up for the dual enrollment course in literature our school offered and it would take away from the rigor of my schedule if I took anything else. After being told I never wanted to be in her joke of a class where all the grades our either vocab tests with false examples and tests she gets off the internet, she became irate told me that I didn’t know anything and that “If you knew half of what you thought you did, you’d be as smart as Einstein.” (another ridiculous statement since I don’t claim to be smarter than anyone or know any more).
She then kicked me our of class, and 20 minutes later we went to the assistant principal’s office where she threatened me by saying “If you ever talk to me like that again, you’ll be lucky if you’re in a class at all.” (what exactly she was trying to say is beyond me), and told me that after I left she told the class that their bad grades would be replaced with a grade she’s taking from another set of notes from the second half of the movie and that that didn’t apply to me because I was not in the classroom and had spoken our against her. Now, I know it’s against some law or rule to punish a student by denying him an opportunity offered to the rest of the class, but I have no idea where to find this law and I do not know what to do about this situation.because I know the administration will not do anything about it. My grade getting knocked down 5 points in the last two months of school is not acceptable, especially in a situation like this where it was based on my personal notes. If anyone knows where to find the Ga state law that says this or what to do in this situation, your suggestions would be much appreciated.