"Barely passing"

He was my English teacher in high school, when I was into politics and goofing and not into school at all. He was a nice guy and did not conduct himself like some of the American personalities at IC and AUB who thought of themselves like British colonizers in India or French colonizers in Algeria. I did learn one English word in the year when he was my teacher: he wrote on my grade sheet: "Barely passing." I remember that I had to look up the word "barely" to understand what he meant. In the beginning, I thought it was a good thing. In Arabic, the dictionary said:
"بالكاد"