By early October, on Friday morning before the first tournament of the season, the Holy Cross Navy and Old Gold, in New Orleans, Flo must end the AP French session a little early and then announce the next assignment:
"Votre prochain devoir va être d'écrire un essai de cinq cents mots sur l'impact de la Conquête sur le français en Louisiane, à remettre la semaine prochaine" (Your next assignment is to write a five hundred word essay on the impact of the Conquête on French in Louisiana, due next week) Flo tells the class about the next assignment in her course.
"What's the Conquête?" Amica, the female PF player, asks her coach before preparing to take the bus to New Orleans with the rest of the debate team.
"The French and Indian War; however, most sources in French about it will refer to it as the Conquête"
She then tells the class about how she has to leave early to travel with the debate team, as well as inviting students to email her for questions about the assignment while she's away, and the few minutes left to the period is spent working on it, in a more relaxed atmosphere, for everyone else; the other veteran debaters are in the other section.
In past years, I would have covered that in class, and not as a topic for an assignment. Sure the onus would still be on the language, grammar, syntax and all that, but reducing the emphasis on history in-class forces me to cover it in assignments. Along with other stuff such as literature, career development... but they won't be as likely to complain about homework questions as opposed to course content, she starts ruminating about the consequences of addressing the complaints against the course as she boards the bus along with Steven and the bus driver acting as a third judge. However, I really want the kids to relate material across courses: learning material in isolation is not always a good thing.
"How do you feel, Steven, about judging a Congressional tournament, other than there's a first time for everything?" Flo asks him.
"I played Congress in high school before I went to Trinity, so I am not completely lost in parliamentary procedure" Steven answers him, while the bus driver is about to talk to them about their experience of judging debate tournaments.
"Year after year, the debate team asks which driver can judge in tournaments and picks their designated driver accordingly. I can't complain, since every hour spent judging a tournament is, to me, paid the same as driving the bus from and to it" the bus driver tells the two faculty members about his experience of being the designated driver for the VAs' debate team.
After the question has been answered, Flo then proceeds to grade homework submitted by her non-AP sections.
Meanwhile, the players all have a bench on the bus to themselves, along with their fully loaded backpacks. It appears that every player spends their time on the bus doing homework, to the extent that it is practical to do so on the road. AP French for Amica, other courses for the other 2 veteran players, the novices seem to be able to finish the entire homework load for the day during the bus trip.
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But this comes to a screeching halt when the bus arrives at the parking of Holy Cross for check-in prior to the beginning of the tournament. When the check-in is completed, and the judging assignments are made, for both Flo and Steven, judging LD rounds and Congress sessions respectively prove the calm before the proverbial storm.
When they return to their respective hotel rooms, with one adult in each room...
"Câlisse! They keep asking about something called the Grand Dérangement!" an angry Flo reads a series of emails sent by students in AP French. "It appears that some students realized that the real impacts of the Conquête on French in Louisiana were spread out over decades!" she keeps fuming over these emails.
"Yet what truly matters in this course is not was so much the substance of the content, but the language part" Amica points out, while reading the answers Flo is about to give them.
And yet, Acadian settlers came to Louisiana in several waves. The first wave was, yes, during the Conquête proper, but the main ones came in the years afterwards. So it appears that some of them remained in Europe for that long before they arrived in what is today southern Louisiana. In the meantime, they retained French, but it became influenced by Spanish and English to varying extents, Flo starts thinking about how much to tell the students about the Grand Dérangement in a way that doesn't amount to outright giving them the answers. That's definitely too much. I might want to just point them in the right direction instead of that. She then gives them links to some online resources to read in French about the Grand Dérangement to those who requested help about it.
So while Amica proofreads said AP French homework, on the other hand, Flo seems much more comfortable with answering the few questions about language she actually had. And from all sections, even though the questions just aren't the same depending on whether it came from AP students or not. Some are as basic as pronouns, or syntax, but these came primarily from her non-AP students. And she then spends the rest of the night grading the rest of the assignments from said non-AP students that she couldn't grade on the bus.
At the end of the following day, the adults are exhausted, they sigh of relief when they board the bus back home. I had to write letters of recommendation for some peeps applying early, including the quiz bowler graduating this year and applying to Notre Dame in restrictive early action. That requires some effort from my part to write, much more so than judging Congressional chambers, Steven's train of thought causes him to fall asleep on the bus.
"On Monday after school, we will have an additional practice where the judgments from this tournament will be reviewed and then we shall address the issues for Duke next week. Rest assured, however, that you won't miss class for Duke since it's an online tournament" Flo announces to the team as soon as the bus departs Holy Cross' campus. "But really, this tournament is a warm-up for Duke"
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"Coach, is there anything special we need to do to be able to participate in this tournament?" a Congressional player asks her, worried about the technical aspects of online tournaments.
"We need to set up NSDA Campus for all new players on Monday also"
Flo then writes an email to Marianne with the VAs' results at Holy Cross and the Monday morning announcement about it. On top of that, she proceeds to finalize payment for Duke, which runs for $240, or $30 per player, since their entries for it have been confirmed this weekend.
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Speaking of morning announcement on Monday, it's delivered during the first period, on which Flo teaches a non-AP section. Marianne feels good about the debate team but feels like the result of the football game against Lake Charles Prep must go first. When the turn of the debate team comes:
"Last weekend, we had a strong showing at our debate season opener, the Holy Cross Navy and Old Gold in New Orleans, with Henry May reaching the semifinals in Lincoln-Douglas! And the Venomous Agendas won in public forum, led by Jacob Gency and Amica Neerwinden!" an enthusiastic Marianne announces in the PA system.
"Pourquoi parler de l'équipe de débats?" (Why talk about the debate team?) a student asks without raising his hand.
The class then becomes unruly as they start arguing about what should be on morning announcements and what shouldn't. So heated the arguments get that it becomes disruptive to everyone.
"Silence!" Flo asks the class in a demanding, French tone, before moving towards the student that started the argument. "Suis-moi au bureau de la directrice" (Follow me to the principal's office)
Even though that tournament is actually an inter-state one, Holy Cross Navy and Old Gold was still mostly attended by in-state teams. However, I don't expect the student body to treat tournaments differently outside of the state championship. Not even Duke vs Holy Cross, Flo starts ruminating while taking the student to the principal's office. As tempting as it could be for me to have the next homework changed for the current one in AP French, I don't think it's fair to punish his section more than absolutely necessary for that student's actions, let alone the other sections.
"Mrs. Principal, I caught this student disrupting my class right after the morning announcement. He sparked an argument over what should be on morning announcements and what shouldn't" Flo delivers her report to Marianne.
"Flo, get your student in the detention room!" Marianne orders her, and the two swiftly leave the office.
Never did people fight over what should be announced in the morning at Wattpad High! Not that there was much to announce in the first place. Now I know the debate team is worth supporting at the institutional level, and I don't regret giving it some space on the morning announcements. We're not just merely going to debate-State; our top players are in it to win! A startled Marianne seems to take a while for the reality of this debate season to sink in.
Yet, even winning one event at Holy Cross made the team "merely" a blip on the student body's radar, but debate is no longer flying underneath it. Nevertheless, even Marianne knew that, in the academic arena, the VA community tended to favor mathletics over quiz bowl, but the quiz bowl team is expected to be competitive nationally as well.
That said, the student in question arrives in a room full of freshmen troublemakers and is made to copy, by hand, the rule he broke that led him here, during his stay in the detention room. Which leads him to miss the assignment, both regular and for extra credit.
At the end of the period, after the regular homework is given, she announces the extra credit assignment. Which turns out to be exactly the same as the regular homework AP French students are currently assigned.
"Je vais vous donner un indice si vous désirez faire le crédit supplémentaire: vos points de départ sont le Grand Dérangement et la Nouvelle-France" (I will give you a hint if you want to do the extra credit: your starting points are the Grand Dérangement and New France)
I wouldn't assume that ninth graders would necessarily know about New France, much less about how France lost what is today Louisiana to Spain. For some it would be something new, but I don't think the Grand Dérangement was covered at all. For future assignments, I believe it would be better to give them assignments about stuff such as financial literacy, and so on, without covering the actual material in class, Flo reflects on what she can reasonably expect out of students on a content level in either course.
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Fast forward to the end of the week and she is now faced with the prospect of grading dozens of essays about the impact of the Conquête on French in Louisiana. These are split between those belonging to students in AP courses and those in the other sections. And so, even though she can grade relatively fast, about 5-10 minutes per essay (she doesn't trust AI grading for anything other than spelling and grammar), she feels forced to keep grading in downtime between LD rounds at Duke. Of which she has 45 minutes per round. One of these essays makes her want to scream:
"Crisse! Why did that student bring up the Plains of Abraham? It contributed to Quebec City falling into British hands, but the Plains of Abraham had an indirect impact at best on French in Louisiana. Yes, Canada was the center of gravity of New France, and especially what is today Quebec, but Louisiana had a separate fate from Canada as a result of the Conquête!" Florence then proceeds to take points off for the content.
This is a breach of topicality to me. Yet, this is nothing compared to the breaches of topicality I endured during LD games. I'd rather judge World Schools at Columbia or Stanford than LD at Duke! She seems to be questioning multiple things at once, her experience of judging LD games at Duke (which made her feel like the players engaged in a game of one-upmanship in arguing for breaches of topicality at hypersonic speaking speeds, and hence made her a little dizzy) as well as whether this work would even be passable for an AP student. If the latter holds for that student, she will then give the full amount of extra credit attached to this assignment.
Yet, she realizes that using downtime between rounds to grade essays forces her to have a second look at all copies graded during the prelims after the prelims end.
However, a second review of the copies graded during tournament downtime turned up little need for changes, and what changes ended up being made seem to be mostly confined in the area of, well, content. Then she can say that the grading is complete, as far as essays submitted up to this point are concerned. Any further essays would come from non-AP students.
At night, her dreams seem to be a little disturbing, and she turns in her bed...
Quebec City, September 13, 1759. The French army has been defeated on the Plains of Abraham, and Flo's oneiric self, an Acadian refugee seeking to flee the Deportation of the Acadians, found herself among the ruins of the city, which was subjected to an intense nightly bombardment by the British for weeks beforehand. With Montcalm severely injured, and Wolfe as well, the British forces were nonetheless advancing towards the city, at that point more vulnerable than ever.
And then Flo was intercepted by the British, which, for some reason, took her oneiric self prisoner, along with a host of other survivors who were trapped inside the city for months on end... Flo ended up having a brief glimpse of the later stages of the Conquête in a dream...
Flo abruptly awakens from this nightmare taking place in the immediate aftermath of the Plains of Abraham. "Tabarnak! I really hope that this grading nightmare ends! While Canadian historiography of the Conquête, both in French and in English, placed the Plains of Abraham front and center, and is often the only thing Canadians will know about it..." she attempts to vent and pants while doing so. "For Sunday, I will not grade any more essays during tournament downtime!"