I had a substitute yesterday because of a district math meeting. I come back the next day to find my textbook missing from one of my senior credit factory classes. It is just a regular textbook - the teacher's edition is put away, but this is the book that I use during class.
Anyhow, I go down to the media center to get a printout (is that one word?) of all the books that have been loaned out to kids. Out of 61 kids enrolled (plus some that have dropped), only about 40 have taken the text out because they still haven't brought back their books from last year.
So when class begins, I tell them to take their homework out that is due. And for extra credit, if they have their book today (usually less than half show up with it despite my pleading), then they can get extra credit. I get to the fourth kid, and ask her for her homework - "No". Then I check the number of the book she has and find out that the book she has is checked out to me. She does have a nice book cover on it, though, one of the fabric kind that you find at Target. I thank her for practicing "safe text", but tell her shouldn't be stealing the teacher's textbook while he is gone. Who knows what the substitute was doing at the time.
I've tried calling home for this darling twice, to no avail. Maybe it is time for a trip down to the principal's office. 14 tardies (actually, probably more, because I forget to mark some of them), a failing grade, and no parents at conferences or on the phone means something else must happen.
I suppose her failure to learn will be attributed to a bad teacher.
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4 comments:
I love the "safe text". I have random bookcover checks where I offer a paltry 5 extra credit points to those who have a bookcover.
"Safe text" is pretty amusing, though I am not sure I could get away with it with my middle schoolers.
I would like to be able to require book covers, but for some reason our administration has decided that we can't.
The sub was probably doing something utterly useless and time-consuming... like glancing down at the class roster. I once made the mistake of taking 20 seconds to look for an extra copy of a worksheet, when I looked up half the class was gone. Danged smart*ss High Schoolers.
I'm sooooo using the "practice safe text" comment on my students! :-D
Hubby teaches Physics, and a couple of weeks ago his students were working on book problems and he was walking around monitoring them and helping as needed. He noticed one student, a normally struggling student, writing her answers rather quickly, so he figured she was copying off of someone else's paper and casually walked her way.
He approached her desk and she looked up at him, picking up her book and pulling it toward her chest so he could see her paper. He glanced down at her paper and ascertained it was the only one on the desk, and then said, "now let me see the book."
"Why? It's just a book!" was her answer.
He held out his hand and she relented and gave him the book... It was his teacher's edition--she'd gone up to get a kleenex and swiped it off of his desk when he was bent over helping another student. She held it toward her because it has all of the answers in blue, and he would have noticed.
Soooo hilarious, what kids think they can get away with.
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