What's wrong with me, a school principal, listening to students' suggestions?

By Wednesday noon, all eighteen classrooms had been renovated.

A brand-new 8K smart interactive blackboard hangs at the front of each classroom.

It features a black bezel and an 86-inch super-large screen, which displays the school's logo and date and time when in standby mode.

The teachers' reactions were even more exaggerated than the students'.

English teacher Li Wan'er was the first to try out the smart blackboard.

She opened the built-in teaching software, projected the courseware directly onto the screen, and could annotate, circle, and zoom in on it with her finger.

"This is so convenient!"

Li Wan'er's ponytail swayed back and forth, as excited as a child.

"In the past, I had to wipe the blackboard three or four times every class, and my nose would be covered in chalk dust."

"Now it's all touchscreen operation, it's very clean and uncluttered."

Math teacher Zhao Wenjie is more practical.

He discovered that the smart blackboard has built-in geometry drawing tools and mathematical modeling tools, which can directly draw abstract function graphs and dynamically rotate and scale them.

"When I used to teach about parabolas, I would draw them crookedly on the blackboard, and the students would be completely confused."

"Now you can directly adjust the parameters, and the image changes in real time, which is very clear."

"It's a pity that I won't be able to showcase my skill in drawing circles in the future."

Even the most conservative Ma Desheng stood in front of the new blackboard for five minutes, nodding thoughtfully.

"It's much better than that old green board."

The data center upgrade was completed on Thursday.

Forty brand-new e-sports PCs were neatly arranged in the server room, their black cases adorned with RGB lighting, and their 27-inch high refresh rate monitors emitting a cool glow.

The network bandwidth has been upgraded from 10M to gigabit fiber optic, and the latency is incredibly low.

Lin Yucai personally posted a notice on the door of the computer room.

Bright red paper, bold black characters.

"No. 13 Middle School E-sports Experience Center"

"Opening hours: Every Friday afternoon during the last period (16:00-17:30)."

"Admission requirements: Achieve a passing grade on the in-class quiz on the same day."

"Those who do not meet the standards are not allowed to enter."

The news caused a sensation throughout the school.

The students crowded in front of the notice, looking at the red paper over and over again.

"Can we play games during the last period on Friday?"

"The prerequisite is passing the test...60 points?"

"Sixty points is too difficult, isn't it? I only got eight points on my last math test."

The one who said this was Li Daqiang himself.

He stood in front of the notice, his 200-pound body blocking half of the door.

His facial expression shifted from excitement to hesitation to confusion, as if he were facing a multiple-choice question that was even more difficult than math.

"Daqiang, it's only 60 points. If you work hard, you should be able to do it."

The classmate next to him patted his broad back.

"Effort? Do you know when the last time I passed was?"

"When?"

"Third grade of elementary school."

The people around burst into laughter.

But Li Daqiang didn't laugh.

He stared at the notice, and the expression on his round face slowly turned serious.

"Sixty points..." he muttered to himself, then turned and strode back to the classroom.

That afternoon, something happened that all the teachers found unbelievable.

Li Daqiang was actually listening to the lecture.

He sat upright, his eyes fixed on the courseware on the smart blackboard, occasionally jotting down notes in his notebook.

Although his notes were crooked and messy, he was indeed taking notes.

After math class, something even more outrageous happened.

Li Daqiang stood up and walked to the front of the podium.

Zhao Wenjie was tidying up his teaching materials when he looked up and saw a mountain of flesh moving in front of him, which almost startled him.

"Teacher Zhao," Li Daqiang said, rubbing his hands together sheepishly, "I'd like to ask you something. What was that quadratic equation quadratic formula we talked about today?"

Zhao Wenjie adjusted his breathing.

He taught math at No. 13 Middle School for two years, and Li Daqiang never asked him any questions.

there has never been.

"Sit down, I'll tell you."

Zhao Wenjie pulled up a chair and sat down next to Li Daqiang.

I picked up a pen and wrote out the derivation process of the quadratic formula step by step.

Li Daqiang listened attentively, his brows furrowed the whole time, occasionally nodding and sometimes showing a puzzled expression.

Fifteen minutes later, Zhao Wenjie finished speaking.

"Did you understand?"

"Thirty percent," Li Daqiang answered honestly.

"It's okay, come find me again after class tomorrow, and I'll explain it again." Zhao Wenjie smiled.

Li Daqiang nodded, and almost tipped over his chair when he stood up.

As he reached the classroom door, he turned back and added another sentence.

"Teacher Zhao, will the quiz on Friday cover quadratic equations?"

"Possibly."

"Then I'll go back and take another look."

Li Daqiang is gone.

Zhao Wenjie stood on the podium, watching his back disappear into the corridor, and remained stunned for a long time.

Then he took out his phone and sent a WeChat message to Lin Yucai.

"Principal Lin, do you know that Li Daqiang came to me today to ask me about math problems?"

"Understood." Lin Yucai replied instantly.

"Give him a basic test paper as a pop quiz on Friday, keep the difficulty a bit low, but not too low."

"Just make sure he can reach it."

Zhao Wenjie replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

Friday has arrived.

An eerie tension permeated the entire No. 13 Middle School.

During the morning classes, the students' concentration reached an unprecedented level.

If you fail the afternoon quiz, you'll miss out on the esports experience center and movie screenings.

During breaks, the corridors are filled with people cramming for exams at the last minute.

Some people squatted on the corner of the stairs reciting formulas, some leaned against the windowsill flipping through notes, and some pulled their deskmates to ask and answer questions in the corridor.

The teachers at No. 13 Middle School felt a sense of unreality upon witnessing this scene.

These students, who usually sleep in class, play around after class, and hand in blank exam papers, are actually studying on their own initiative.

Although the motivation was to play games.

But the result is the same.

The pop quiz started promptly at 2 PM.

Following Lin Yucai's instructions, each class's homeroom teacher prepared a 45-minute basic test.

The questions are not difficult and cover the basic knowledge points taught in the last two weeks. The passing score is set at 60%.

The scene in the examination room was nothing short of surreal.

Students who are usually carefree are now hunched over their desks, writing furiously, their level of tension comparable to that of the college entrance examination.

Class 4, Grade 11.

Li Daqiang sat in the second-to-last row, his knuckles white from gripping the pen so tightly.

He could understand most of the questions on the exam paper...

He had three extra lessons with Zhao Wenjie in the past few days, and at least memorized the quadratic formula.

Although I still don't quite understand the derivation process, I can calculate the answer by applying the formula without any problems.

I did well on the multiple-choice questions, answering nine out of ten correctly.

I did okay with the fill-in-the-blank questions; I filled in four out of five.

The calculation problems were a bit difficult.

He calculated and erased on the draft paper, leaving eraser shavings all over the table.

With ten minutes left, he still had one big question to answer.

My palms were sweaty.

He took a deep breath and wrote down the steps he knew how to do.

He couldn't figure out the rest of the solution, so he gritted his teeth.

I simply applied the quadratic formula, calculated a rough number, and filled it in.

I don't know if it's right or wrong, but at least I wrote it down.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the exam, and sighs and cheers mingled in the classroom.

"Did you solve that last, big problem?"

"I only did half of it, and then I just kept guessing."

"I got all the multiple-choice questions right, and I only got one fill-in-the-blank question wrong. I should pass, right?"

"I'm doomed. This is the first time I've taken a test seriously. I wrote too slowly and left the last three questions blank."