“Daddy, is she a good student?” The Girl was helping me grade papers (she loves going over multiple choice work — no really, there’s no convincing or arm-twisting necessary), and as she always does, she asked about this student and that student. I glanced at the name.

Is she a good student? How I answer that question would depend on how we define a good student. If we define it as a student who is always hard-working, who is always pleasant to be with, who always gets her work done and always does stellar work, there was no way I could possibly describe the student L was asking about as a “good student.” Indeed, by that metric, she is just about everything — anything — but. Or at least she was. At the beginning of the year, she was belligerent, often refusing to work, often showing nothing but unreasonable anger about any correction or redirection. She was, in short, a nightmare student. And that means that I was immediately drawn to her, immediately interested in helping her, and immediately frustrated with her more often than not.

But the last few months, she’s been changing. Some days, she works. Some days, she’s incredibly attentive during whole-class instruction. And then some days, she’s back to her old games. But there is progress. And really, if we look at any definition of a good student, progress must be factored into the definition.

“Sometimes, sweetie, sometimes,” I said, then added, “Why?”

“Because she got them all right.”