Thursday, January 21, 2010

Irritations

This has been a great year, school-wise. I love these kids and things are really going well. However, there have been a few things that are just....irritating. Call them "teacher peeves:"
  • ...when a student misses a day of school, does not make up their work, then on the test day, comes up to my desk and says "I wasn't here for this"
  • ...when a student uses a cell phone during my class, and when asked to give it up (until the end of class!!), obviously passes me a completely different phone - and how do I know this? Because I've been picking up his phone most days for the last 2 weeks.
  • ...when a student tells me that I cannot call home because he won't be allowed back in the house if he gets in trouble - and then I find out that what that means is that he will have to confess to sneaking his phone out of the house when he was restricted from using it at all (caring parents?? SHOCKING.)
  • ...when my students don't just deal with their failures and move on - whether it is a cell phone being picked up, or lying to me and being caught, or being in complete denial about an uncompleted test.
This has all happened, with one student, over the last two days. He is normally a pretty great kid, a sweetheart, a generally hard worker, but over the last few months (since football ended) his grades have slipped and he is having trouble staying focused during class.

We had an IEP/ parent meeting yesterday and the entire way through the meeting he kept trying to make excuses and corrections. I said, "he didn't finish his test, he only did 2 of the questions" and his response was "no, I did almost the entire thing!" I said, "you need to start being responsible for yourself when you scew up" and he said "but that wasn't my fault!"

I don't know how to make this kid understand that he is not acting like an adult...and at this point, he's not even acting like he's 16.

Really, it's closer to 6.

1 comment:

Tracey said...

Great blog...I now follow you....you need to post more often...just my opinion....smile!