Excuses, Excuses, Excuses!

I arrived at school this morning at 7:15 or thereabout. I walked by the principal's office and when I glanced in, I saw one of my student's mother sitting there. There is a whole history with this kid not doing his work, having a ton of absences from school, and just generally being completely irresponsible about his work. We basically all filled the mother in on the fact that even after all these absences, he has not come to see us for his makeup work, and that, in my class at least, he has completely blown off the quarterly historical writing, which constituted a good portion of the quarterly grade.

Mom is young, overwhelmed, and completely at a loss as to how to handle this situation. I find myself, in spite of the fact that I have no kids of my own, proffering parenting suggestions to this obviously confused woman. I felt kind of bad about it.

Having a parent conference first thing in the morning is always tough. I'm not really in the game fully at that hour. I mean, I usually have a ton of kids in my room first thing, so I really can't count on getting any work done before the homeroom bell, but still, a meeting with a parent forces me to be a lot more alert than I actually am. But I got through it OK and there was some progress made in terms of getting this kid back on track.

The mother did ask if the kid could make up the essay he missed, but I had to tell her that so much class teaching time actually went into preparing the kids for this assignment, that there isn't any way that he could possibly make it up now. I think sometimes this assumption is there that a kid can just march in, after nott paying attention for months on end, and "make up" the work. Listen, if the kids were able to do the work without having to show up or pay attention in class, why would they even need to come to school in the first place? I don't give assignments to create busy work and be a pain in the ass to kids. I give homework as a continuation of what I've taught in class so that the kids can continue to learn the content and hone their skills.

But alas..who is going to understand? I'm such a school marm, right?

The funny thing is that even though Mom was supporting what we had to say, and even though she seems to want to help, she had all the excuses in place and ready to go. The kid spends too much time on the cell phone. He has friends who are bad influences. He does not come home right after school. He plays hockey and the tournaments don't get over until 11:00 at night and he's tired when he gets home. He watches TV in his room til all hours of the night.

There seem to be some pretty simple solutions there...

Take the phone away and/or stop paying the bill. Pick him up after school or refuse to give him permission to go out. Pull him from hockey if it is preventing him from doing his work. Unplug the freakin' TV and take it out of his room. Last I checked, TVs were not structural support beams that would cause the house to implode if removed!

Anyway, as a teacher, I have pretty much resigned myself to the fact that most of my dialogue with the kids is going to consist of a one-sided chorus of pathetic excuses. My dog ate my homework. My little brother blew up the house last night. My father fell off the Empire State Building last night and we had to go see him in the hospital. That kind of crap.




As I was getting ready to leave this meeting, the mother of this child gave me a new excuse. Even after 11 years in the biz, I had not heard this one. She said that due to her son's relationship with a little girl, another child (who is the jilted ex of the girl), has become so jealous and enraged, that he has gone so far as to vandalize her home to retaliate against her son (my student). Let me tell you, if you think there is anything innocent about these kids and their "little relationships" let me just stand up to correct that misconception. These kids are doing EVERYTHING...including some stuff I have never even heard of. Half the kids will be pregnant before I ever am. So, she says that due to the trashing of their home, the kid is unable to concentrate on his work. What the.....?

I went down to my classroom to find it filled with the early morning crowd. I told them off for being in my room YET AGAIN when I'm not there. I tell them that as long as I'm in the room, they are welcome to hang out there before first bell. There is a small group of about 6 kids who refuse to pay attention to this direction. They come in, see that the lights are out, the computer is powered off, that my jacket is not there, and that there are no other signs of life eminating from the general vicinity of my desk...and yet they stay there. I have asked them countless times not to do be in the room unsupervised. Their response? "Oh yeah. We forgot." Jesus, get me the Alzheimers unit!

I want to punish the kids and chuck them out altogether, but the problem is that they're the nicest group of kids I have. I don't want to discourage them from coming to my room in the morning and tell me what's going on. Usually they are the same kids who can be counted on to spill the beans and tell me what's going down when I sense trouble. I need them in my
corner!




I have been running marathons after these kids for the past couple of weeks because I was foolish enough to assign the quarterly historical writing and actually expect that they would pass it in on the designated date. I have about half of them turned in. The sad thing is that we've already gone through the first draft and one rewrite, and some kids have not even passed in the original yet. I have heard so many excuses as to why these are not due. The most common is that the computer is busted.

In the past 11 years, I have learned to anticipate any excuse related to computers. I know, I know, I have to write in to Apple and Dell and Gateway and find out what's going on. I mean, all these computers function perfectly well when they're doing IMs and Blogs, but the minute they have to write an essay on first amendment rights, or the national statistics of Uganda, their computers freeze, melt down, explode and just stop functioning! I need to find out if these machines have been programmed to have an aversion to completing tasks related to social studies. What to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have against my quarterly historical writings???

Anyway, I have my email addresses up there on the board for the kids to copy down. As I said, I anticipate every possible excuse.

Excuse: My computer broke. Response: Write it out by hand

Excuse: My printer broke. Response: Email it to me.

Excuse: My internet is down. Response: Save it to disc and print it in school, but hand copy it just in case.

Excuse: My disc went corrput. Response: Copy it out by hand just to show me that it is done.

Excuse: My printer didn't work. I broke my hand and can't write it. My email is down. I sent it but it didn't make its way to your email. Response: You're fucked.

I mean, really! Yesterday, this girl came running up to me in a very dramatic fashion (like everything else she does) and asked, "Did you get my email?"

I knew I hadn't but I went through the motions of check it with her. When she swore she emailed it, I said, "That's OK. Just email it to me again, and print out the original send attempt with the time stamp on it. That way I can see that it was sent when you said it was."

I came in today and she had another excuse. I asked her the ultimate bust question. "What did you write your essay about? Tell me about it."

Deer in the headlights. I caught her out. She busted down and admitted that she had, indeed, never even put pen to paper to do an essay!



No joke, this kid came in today after a 3 day absence. He is constantly out. I have a policy whereby if you're absent, you MUST come see me the next morning or you take a "0" on your homework. I don't expect you to have the work done by the time you come to my class, but I expect you to come and get the work so that you have the right materials in class and don't interrupt my class time to make me go looking around my messy desk for papers. This kid is out all the time and he NEVER comes to seek out his homework. I absolutely blasted him today about it. When I asked him why he was out, NO JOKE, he claimed he was in the hospital because he had the Asian bird virus. And he was deadly serious. I sent him to the principal!

Jesus, the excuses are unreal!!!!!