Warning - it's a long one today...

Oh my, my, my…


Last night I called the school to make arrangements to meet with S’s Geography/Music teacher. I know he is doing well in music, but I had been advised by the SERT that he hadn’t been doing as well in Geography. I was of the feeling that it would be good to be able to put a face to a name, and to get a feel for the teacher’s approach on things.
Sometimes you just need to meet a person to be able to get that ‘vibe.’

I set up a meeting for first thing this morning.

After I spoke with S’s teacher, I decided I would try and kill two birds with one stone and see if I could get a meeting with the A-man’s English teacher. The A-man told me that she still had not gone over the reader response from his first novel, and I was starting to feel that it would probably be time for another assignment to be due because they had just finished reading Canterbury Tales and had moved on to Shakespeare.

It turned out that the English teacher didn’t have her prep time at the same time as my first meeting, so we opted to have a telephone conversation. Apparently the A-man had been assigned the Canterbury Tales reading response assignment a little while ago – and he didn’t turn it in.

I asked her about the follow up she had told me she was going to do on October 8 with the first assignment. She seemed to have completely forgotten about that. I told her that the A-man hadn’t even received the work back so he didn’t even know if he was working better toward achieving the goals she had laid out.

She seemed surprised that he didn’t have the assignment back because she had a mark of 61% recorded in her book. I asked her if she had taken the time to review the work with the A-man and she admitted that she “didn’t think so.” She also admitted that she wasn’t even sure where the assignment was. (HUH?)

I told her that I thought the A-man was still at school working on the set for the play, so she told me she was going to get him to come to see her and they would review the work right then. I sent the A-man a text to confirm that he was at school, and it turned out he wasn’t – teacher was away so they weren’t able to work on the set.

I texted the A-man that he was going to have to do his reader response that night and he answered that he would “see if he had time because (his) drama ISU was due.” I told him that he would find the time.

(To the teacher’s credit, when I got home from work there was a message on my machine indicating that she had called the A-man to the office, but since he didn’t come she assumed he wasn’t still at the school. So she did follow up on that at least.)

Fast forward to my getting home from work: the A-man was sitting at the computer working on his Drama ISU, and S was downstairs. I brought in the groceries, and while putting them away I started to ask the A-man about his English. He told me point blank, “I decided not to do that assignment.”

EXCUSE ME?!? Not a happy Mommy when I heard that answer.

The A-man went on to further explain that the regular teacher wasn’t there when the assignment was given out – and that the substitute gave it to them one day and expected the work to be turned in the next day. Apparently the entire classroom made a “pact” that no one was going to turn in the work. They were staging a protest.
Again, not flying with this mother.

I called Jazzy’s house and asked to speak to her brother. He is in the A-man’s class, and I knew I would get a little more reliable information from him. Apparently the one-night thing was true, and apparently the class did all voice their unhappiness with the time-frame given, but when asked, Jazzy’s brother did admit to completing the assignment and handing it in, as required.

He also had the assignment rubric and I requested a copy be emailed to me. Armed with this information, I explained to the A-man that although ‘everyone’ said they weren’t going to do the assignment, obviously Jazzy’s brother did and I was willing to bet that others did as well. I also told him that a “protest” was not going to make his English mark any better and since this is the grade that is looked at for University, I suggest he get something done to review with the teacher when he arrived at the class today.

After dinner, I sat down at the laptop while the A-man finished plugging away on the Drama homework. I pulled up a website that offered both a synopsis of the Canterbury Tales, and also some teaching notes about the poem. (I have saved it because once I started going through it with the A-man, I think it may be some classic literature that I might actually enjoy. But I digress…)

After the A-man declared his Drama ISU ‘done,’ I suggested that he take the time to read both the summary and the section of the book that the assignment was on while I reviewed his Drama. There were a few parts where he didn’t quite answer what was required, so I made some notations in red to suggest he consider adding/revising these sections.

After he did this, I helped him pull the various parts together to form one complete package. As we were doing this cut-and-paste mindless work, we talked about the angle he was going to take with respect to The Canterbury Tales.

He decided to focus on the “social commentary” aspect of the Tale. He felt that the selection of the travelers were in fact a good “mix” of what you would find in either a classroom or even in the world. Once we got talking more and more, he seemed to warm up to the subject a bit more. Suddenly his little hunt and peck fingers were flying on the computer as he was selecting which characters he wanted to focus on and which quotes he was interested in citing. (He was also very happy that the lines were numbered for citation purposes…)

Anyway – I had him prepare a very rough draft of the concept of his ideas to present to the teacher today. I am hoping that she will be able to read what he had prepared and at least give him a little bit of guidance so that he can finish it up complete tonight and submit it tomorrow. I am also hoping that she will accept the assignment given that she did not follow through on the follow up she had promised three weeks ago.

The best part of the evening was when the A-man was going to bed.  He came over to me and gave me a big hug and said, "Thank you, Mom, for all of your help with this.  I really mean that."  He's never thanked me for being so tough on him.  Could he be starting to see that I am only 'mean' because I care?
I went to the school this morning and met with S’s teacher. Apparently S has 85% in Music class, so there isn’t any cause for concern in that classroom. Geography, on the other hand is a bit of a different story. Apparently one of S’s hand written assignments wasn’t “very neat” so he didn’t receive high marks on it. I reiterated that writing isn’t a strong suit for S. The next thing that he said, however, it was really stuck in to my head.
“I do put notes on the board, so he will just have to get used to taking notes. He is preparing for college after all.”

I asked about having the notes in advance for scanning, but apparently he doesn’t “do” that. Here is a teacher that doesn’t really understand the benefits of Assistive Technology, nor does he seem willing to learn to understand it.

This is okay – S has an EA in the classroom, and this EA will be able to scribe for him. We can adjust to this. At least I know where he stands.

He went over some other details about how his classroom works, and now I know to get S started on some of the end of unit assignments now – they are directly from the text book, and the text book is on his computer.

He will be able to bring his mark up to something more reflective of his abilities. S has no interest in following the Geography field, so I doubt that he will even take it again after this year. Not the end of the world.