Straight-A Student Offers to Give Away Bonus Points to Classmate Who Scored Lowest

A unique request by a bright student has now been shared by thousands on Facebook after his teacher posted about the novel incident he witnessed in the classroom. The teacher from Kentucky felt the need to “shout this out.”

Winston Lee, a teacher at Letcher County Central High School, was picking up exams about World War II in his 11th-grade history class when he noticed an asterisk with a small note at the bottom of one exam. What it said gave him pause.

A student’s generosity has gone viral following his teacher’s ‘shout out’ on social media.

“If you could, can you give my bonus points to whoever scores the lowest?” the note from Lee’s student read.

Lee told CNN that he was “taken aback.” As any parent knows, students are competitive most cling to each and every point they receive in hopes of improving their grade, so this request truly surprised the teacher.

“He wanted to give up what he had earned so blindly,” Lee explained to CNN. “I took it as a really compassionate, loving and kind act from a young person that most people would consider rare.”

The post touched Lee so much that he was moved to share the post online and where it was shared thousands of times. To date, the post has received over 100,000 likes and 70,000 shares.

In the post, Lee explained how “one of my guys” received an extra five points on the exam after doing well in the previous day’s review game. The straight-A student ended up scoring a 94 on the exam, and the points he gave away allowed his classmate to go from a failing to passing grade.

Although the kid’s generosity received a lot of positive feedback, some questioned whether giving a student who didn’t pass the extra points was the best thing to do.

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Some argued “an offer to help the struggling student(s) to learn the material would be better.” Another agreed writing, “The grades reflect that they learned something when they didn’t.”

When asked about the negative feedback, Lee commented that some people “overthought” the post.

“I tried to not let any of the negative comments affect any of the positivity that was coming from it,” Lee shared. “I just wanted to honor what this student had asked for and felt he earned his right to give his points away because it was such an amazing gesture.”

He goes even further to say that the act of generosity and kindness should be found more often in classrooms today and beyond.

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“Never in my teaching experience have I heard of a student willingly give away something they had earned to allow an extra opportunity for someone else,” Lee explained. “So, the ultimate message is to take from his example and pay it forward.”

Wherever you stand, we do not often feature stories of teens being selfless because there is a cultural narrative that all of them are self-involved, but this story proves that not all teenagers fit the stereotype. After all, you never know what some kids go through at home and a student who would normally do fine on a test might have simply been having a bad day.