Very Frustrating

I have a student who is quite bright, but her grades are slipping. Her algebra skills were already good when she entered my algebra class, but as the year progresses and the material veers farther and farther away from linear algebra, she understands less and less of it.

Her father contacted me and we set up a time to talk, which we did, and I expressed the fact that a kid missing 26 days (so far) is bound to fall behind even with help from home because she doesn't have a teacher to ask, and doesn't have peers to discuss the work with. All was fine when the father left - I told him that I have no doubts that the kid will make it to school the rest of the year, she'll begin to catch up, she'll be okay for geometry next year, yadda yadda, yadda.

Then the mother calls me, and seems furious that a kid that did have an "A" the first quarter has an "F" now (although this is after two weeks of work for the quarter). I explain everything as I had a week or so before with the father, but she doesn't think that he did a good enough job. She expresses her displeasure that I didn't call her when things went bad; I explained that she sees her child's grades continuously over the internet (which she conceded), that it is too early in the quarter to be alarmed since there are so few grades, and that, well, I didn't put it so bluntly, but "what do you expect of a kid that has missed 26 days of school in an honors class?"

She missed a day last week because of student council, that's 27!, and then Friday comes.

I go to the attendance page on the computer to set it up and see that she is marked as being absent. I mentally roll my eyes. When the students begin to come in, there is the student. I think to myself, "Self, her parents are sending her to school for algebra because they know that she's missed so many days".

She comes to see me and says, "I wasn't at school all day today, but my mother and I came to see my brother play in the band...."

I know where this is headed, she's going to say that her mother is making her stay the hour.

"....but now I have to go home. My mother told me to come upstairs to tell you that I am here."

Huh?

"Can you mark me here?"

I tell the poor child that when I take attendance, that I mark kids "present" if they are present and I mark them "absent" if they are absent.

"So you can't change it?"

"No, unless you stay."

I truthfully tell her that I actually cannot change it. Since the office has marked her absent for the entire day, I can't override it, so I tell her to go to the office to work things out. That way she her mother can hear the obvious from two people.

I find it very frustrating that a parent, knowing that her kid is doing poorly from being absent so much, would send her child to a teacher to tell them to mark them present despite the fact that a perfectly healthy girl is leaving for the day, according to the code on the attendance, for a family vacation.

Photo Album

A student of mine gave me a small photo album for me to look at. One of the pictures had written under it:

Bush, Lincoln, Benjamin, Franklin

Can anyone guess what the photo was?

Calculators

I'm astounded at how poorly designed calculators are. I mean, if I had a nickel for each time that a kid (by their own admission) put an expression into a calculator and the calculator gave them a wrong answer, I'd be a rich man.

Okay, update: Yes, I was being sarcastic. Kids assume that what they write on a piece of paper or what is written in a book is what they are putting into a calculator. 

We are doing exponential growth models right now. They may have to put in 45(1+0.05)³, but they won't get what they are supposed to. They'll blame it on the calculator which "gives wrong answers all the time". They just don't understand that they aren't using it correctly. 

My Reputation

I pass out a short quiz to my students on linear equations. One question was about Marcus, who buys a snow shovel and then begins to shovel sidewalks for people. 

Once the quiz was turned in, the lesson was given, and some classwork was completed, kids begin to head out the door. One kid says, "Did you mean to write snot-shoveling business?" I just laughed and said, "No!, Is that what it says?" Sure enough, it did. The rest of the class starts to laugh and they all said that coming from me, it was just as they expected. We all had a pretty good laugh at that one.

Thanks, Scholastic!

I'm not sure how Scholastic ever got my email address, but after too many emails about clickable Expo markers, I decided to unsubscribe myself from their mailing list. Just click on this link and then hit "Submit" to cancel your membership.

If it was only possible....

Naturally, "Cancel" works just fine.