C'est une mauvaise chose à dire, mais ...

C'est un vrai cancre ; le professeur le met toujours au fond de la classe //

He's a real dunce; the teacher always puts him in the back of the classroom

Since today's Inktoner prompt ("roasted") doesn't really speak to me, I decided to take one from Transparent Language French Word of the Day again.

What a mean thing to say though. He is not slow or stupid, he is just dreamy. Look at him there, everybody is already gone and he is just sitting there looking at the last leaves of autumn.

Which reminds me of a lovely Spanish idiom "estar pensando en las musarañas" - to be distracted, dreamy, absent, but literally "to be thinking about the shrews". Why the shrews? Well, they are cute.