Last night

Picture this: It’s about 7:30 on a Tuesday evening. I have arrived home late and am just sitting down to dinner. The R-man and his girlfriend have just arrived home and I am chatting with them.
S comes upstairs and sits down at the table. The conversation goes as follows,
“Hey buddy. How you doing? How was your day?”
“Fine. But, Mom, I have to make a thermos tonight.”
“A thermos? Why do you have to do that?”
“For Geography. And it’s due tomorrow.”
“Uh huh… and where is the assignment sheet? I’ll need to see that to make sure we have all of the items you will need to do this.” Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “What does a thermos have to do with Geography?”
“I don’t have the sheet, but I have a note in my agenda.”
S goes downstairs and gets his agenda. He turns to the page where the note is written, and hands me the book. I can’t make out much of what it says – he has terrible handwriting.
“Do you want me to read that for you?” He proceeds to read me a note that tells me he has to turn in the thermos in the morning as it was actually due TODAY and the assignment was given on April 16th. (Yeah, two weeks ago.) If he doesn’t have the assignment done, he needs to have a note from me explaining why it wasn’t done.

Oh, you bet. I was totally not impressed. I looked back in his agenda. On the day the assignment was handed out, he had written w/s (worksheet) in the Science section. Nothing else. Nothing is written in the agenda about a project being due, not on the date the assignment was given out, not on the day that it was do. Not one thing – just "w/s".

“uh…Bud, this is a project for Science, not Geography.”
“Oh….well, that makes more sense, I guess.”
“Mhm…and just HOW do you plan to come up with a thermos in ONE NIGHT when the rest of the class has had two weeks?”
“Well, I just didn’t know why we had to do it, so I didn’t want to.”

??!!??!!!? (He didn’t want to…!!)

Anyway, I told him to go down to the garage and find some cardboard, and something else that could possibly hold liquid. He came up with a 1.5 litre plastic bottle and a large cardboard box. I showed him how to measure, and then he cut out 4 sections of the box that would be able to surround the bottle. I showed him how to score the cardboard to fold it, and he proceeded to tape (not very neatly) the cardboard in a sort of box around the bottle.
He then told me, “I need insulation to keep cold things cold and warm things hot.”
“What types of items can be used for insulation?”
”Umm… well, snow, Styrofoam, um… insulation – that sort of stuff.”
Off he goes on another scouring adventure to see what he can find that will work as an insulator for his ‘thermos.’
He comes up and tells me that he found some insulation in the laundry room from when Hubby was putting in the new washer and dryer, and asks if he can use that. After a quick phone call to Hubby to ascertain that this is, in fact, okay, I tell him he can.
We don plastic gloves, and go down to insulate the thermos. Boy did he ever stuff that box good.

Afterwards, he added more tape to the box to ensure that it would all stay together. Total time on the project? Maybe 45 minutes. Did he complete the assignment? I have no idea – because he didn’t bring the actual assignment sheet home.

Am I pleased? Nope.
Am I going to contact the school to find out WHY he didn’t have a note in his agenda about the assignment? (The agenda that we have to purchase every year, but is never used??) You bet.

I am ticked at S, for sure. He knew it was due, and he simply didn’t want to do it, so he opted not to mention it. He is very much aware of the fact that I wasn’t very happy with his actions.

However, that said, I am ticked that he has two – not just one – teachers in that class that could have taken the time to ensure that he had it written as a reminder in his agenda. He has a full time EA! Is that not part of her job??
Assistance with organizational skills is something that is on his IEP. I am going to have to make a phone call to the SERT today to get some clarification on this.

Should I be upset with S alone, or am I right in being upset with the EA also?