My seventh grade French teacher, Mr. Cook (name changed), was a bona fide genius. Or, so he told us every day, for ten months straight. We happened to be his first teaching job right out of a top-notch university. He said some strange twist of fate had landed him at our “dump” of a school, but mark his words, he’d be off teaching at a first-rate educational institution by next fall. He possessed an “incredibly high” IQ which had gained him entrance to MENSA, an exclusive club for geniuses, a club none of us dullard children would ever be invited to join.

Mr. Cook was right about Nathan Hale Junior High. The school left a lot to be desired. Known as Nathan Hale Junior Jail by its inmates, the place was home to many a fight. You could call the student body a melting pot of various ethnicities, but it felt more like a boiling pot, often erupting when factions went after each other. On more than one occasion, I had to dash home, trying to outrun a combative classmate. A year after we moved from the district, a student stabbed a teacher in the hallway.

Back to Mr. Cook. The administrators had hired him for an experimental program: teaching a French  course called ALM.  I believe the only requirement for class entrance was that you must own a record player. In addition to classroom instruction, you were required to listen to French records at home. I remember our favorite excuse for undone homework was, “Tan pis. Mon tourne-disque ne marche pas.” Meaning: “Too bad. My record player is broken.”

In myriad ways, Mr. Cook let us know how dense and uncouth he found us, his voice always dripping with contempt. A few weeks into the term, one of the class “dummies” went to a college bookstore and bought the teachers’ edition of the ALM course. That edition contained all the course quizzes and, more importantly, all of the answers to the quizzes. For a small fee, that student sold quiz answers to classmates and, voila, a miracle occurred. Grades soared.

I didn’t take part in the scam. I feared getting caught. Also, my mind did not grasp the elaborate mathematical system my delinquent friends devised to deceive the teacher. They made certain that all participants occasionally got some answers wrong, that everyone received scores which varied from test to test and that all the cumulative scores stayed within the person’s desired grade range—a much too complex plan for my math-disabled brain. My respect for my seventh grader compatriots has grown over the years.  Those boys came up with elegant scheme that revealed the budding brilliance of their criminally leaning minds.

At the end of the year, Mr. Cook claimed credit for turning a group of unrefined ruffians who couldn’t read French into a group of unrefined ruffians who tested as competent at reading rudimentary French. To be clear, he viewed us as only somewhat competent, not geniuses. He remained the sole genius.

As it turned out, the cohort who cheated did become marginally adept at speaking record-player French. All in all, a win-win for everyone.