My kids have had a love hate relationship with homework for a long time. They love to hate it. Honestly so did I but I understood it to be a necessary evil that comes with school. Like anything you want or need to be good at, practice is necessary and schoolwork is no exception. Homework is intended to be a minimum workload for practice and for those who need extra help, extra practice is always good. However, a couple of my kids have taken the "let's ignore the problem and maybe it will go away" approach. Well tonight it has come back to bite them in the butt.
A couple of weeks ago we had "Parent-Teacher" conferences as they were called when I was a kid. now they are called SEP's or Student Educator Planning meetings which to me is a bit of an irony. The one clear thing that comes out of these meetings is the lack of a plan. I left the "SEP's" on a chocolate-fueled (PTA fundraiser) mini rant with a couple of them and instructions to them to get their missing assignments turned in. Yes the missing assignments monster reared its ugly head. I gave instructions and received a grudging commitment from each of them that the missing assignments would be cleared up and I left it at that. I have followed up with my kids a few times since then and got less intelligible answers than most politicians would give. Talk about non-committal! If only they had a class in that. My kids would be acing that one!
Grandma even pitched in to help the one that was struggling the most by offering a gift card with a modest sum as an encouragement to get the assignments turned in. I had high hopes and backed off of them to see what would happen.
Well I got as much of a reaction as I did trying to get Water and oil to blend. NOTHING! I finally was able to access the district grade book site tonight and the results were basically that nothing had been turned in. In fact looking closer at the details I saw that much that was turned in had poor grades as well as some tests. So I guess the mini-rant and then backing off the pressure didn't really do the trick. I grounded three of them to their rooms where they will stay in friendless, TV-less, computerless, phonesless, lifeless stupor until the site and/or teacher tells me otherwise.
Y'Know, there are times I really hate school!
A couple of weeks ago we had "Parent-Teacher" conferences as they were called when I was a kid. now they are called SEP's or Student Educator Planning meetings which to me is a bit of an irony. The one clear thing that comes out of these meetings is the lack of a plan. I left the "SEP's" on a chocolate-fueled (PTA fundraiser) mini rant with a couple of them and instructions to them to get their missing assignments turned in. Yes the missing assignments monster reared its ugly head. I gave instructions and received a grudging commitment from each of them that the missing assignments would be cleared up and I left it at that. I have followed up with my kids a few times since then and got less intelligible answers than most politicians would give. Talk about non-committal! If only they had a class in that. My kids would be acing that one!
Grandma even pitched in to help the one that was struggling the most by offering a gift card with a modest sum as an encouragement to get the assignments turned in. I had high hopes and backed off of them to see what would happen.
Well I got as much of a reaction as I did trying to get Water and oil to blend. NOTHING! I finally was able to access the district grade book site tonight and the results were basically that nothing had been turned in. In fact looking closer at the details I saw that much that was turned in had poor grades as well as some tests. So I guess the mini-rant and then backing off the pressure didn't really do the trick. I grounded three of them to their rooms where they will stay in friendless, TV-less, computerless, phonesless, lifeless stupor until the site and/or teacher tells me otherwise.
Y'Know, there are times I really hate school!
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