Mrs. Tirado has a reputation for being the teacher that wants the best from her students. She works hard to teach them academics and expects them to put effort back into the class with their assignments and tests in order to grow up into bright individuals.

This may sound like the perfect teacher and someone who truly cares about her students, but what went wrong?

Mrs. Tirado teaches at West Gate K-8 School in the area of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Last fall, she gave an assignment to her students that was a notebook project, and the due date was two weeks from the day it was assigned. When multiple students neglected to do their explorer notebooks and had nothing to turn in, she

was forced to give them zeroes for the assignment due to their lack of work and effort put into the task.

However, Mrs. Tirado stuck to her gut instincts and decided that students who placed no effort into the explorer notebook project did not deserve half of the credit. She thinks that these are unrealistic expectations that are setting kids up for failure in life. Giving people who put in no effort 50% means that they will believe that they can get through life without making any attempts to succeed, and that just isn’t realistic.

However, because of the no-zero policy, Mrs. Tirado’s position at the school was terminated. Her students were not aware that she was going to be fired and she was to leave immediately. But before she left, she decided she had one final message to leave behind.