As a teacher, I have tons of good stories to tell. Some will have to wait until I’m retired though for my own safety!
This one I can safely relate. Several years ago, I had a student who was a real pita (look that up…I’m not talking about bread). I thought that this child existed just to make my life miserable, until I met his parents! Now there’s another story, but I can’t tell that or I’ll have to go into the Witness Protection Program!
Anyway, this child rarely turned in his work. He made a lot of excuses as to why any given assignment was not finished.
So I asked for a meeting with the child’s parents to get more info and to figure out how to help this child be more productive. Father did not attend the meeting because he forgot or something, and the mother arrived a bit late. She made some excuse (in education, we call that the “apple — tree” theory).
I told mother that her son was not turning in much work, especially homework. She acknowledged this, and said, “Well, he doesn’t like to do homework” (yeah, not many 10 year olds do!). She then made some more excuses about how it’s hard for her to keep on top of things at home because she works during the day (apple —tree).
Then she said she was hoping I could give her some ideas to help her son. “Whenever I leave the house,” she stated, “He plays video games on his iPhone. I just don’t know what I can do.”
I stared at her in disbelief for a moment. Then I calmly said, “Could you take the phone away from him????”
“Oh!” she replied, “I didn’t think of that.”
I didn’t even bother to ask why a 10-year old has his own iPhone nor why he was using it to access the Internet unsupervised (those are future blog topics I will rant about!)
At least the child had a roof over his head and was being fed (his father usually dropped off an In N’ Out combo for him in the school office daily for lunch!!!!)
Yeah…..
#parenting101
#justsayno
#nohomework
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