Not so Plausible Deniability
May 10th, 2006 by MarkTonight was a frustrating night at work. It was my new class. Most of the class is pretty good, but there are four students who make it particularly trying. One is a girl called Wendy who never does as much homework as she’s supposed to do. She’s the only girl I’ve ever taught who is a perpetual “D” student, and she consistently hands in the homework she should have done if she were a “C” student. Each time this happens, I double the homework assignment and mention it in class. After seven consecutive classes of doing this and three phone calls to her parents, she’s still not doing the amount of homework she’s supposed to. She now owes me double homework for every taping assignment I’ve given over the last two months. She and her family’s domestic worker who brings her to class both said that it’s “a lot”. Duh.
Wendy’s not the toughest problem student now, though. No, that title falls upon a boy who goes by “Little Billy”. He’s a bright boy, and somehow does alright in class despite having no prior experience in English classes, but he’s skipped some taping and he hasn’t turned in any of the first three written assignments. All of our students have two notebooks for small homework assignments, called “My questions A” and “My questions B”. That way, while I’m grading one notebook, they can do their next assignment in the other.
Little Billy has been pretty good about his homework on the whole, but when he doesn’t do it and I mention it in class, he always says he turned in whatever assignment in “just before class”. Tonight, I told him and his mom to stay after class, and I explained the situation to her. Little Billy looked up at her and swore that he’d turned in his tapes last class and two classes ago and that maybe I’d just misplaced them. I asked if he had them, and he said that no, I’d never given them back. So, I asked about his written homework. Predictably, he said he’d written the homework assignments in the proper books and turned them in; I just hadn’t given them back to him. Undeterred, I reached into his backpack, and there I found a “My questions A” notebook and a “My questions B” notebook. Both were completely blank.
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May 10th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
haha!
May 10th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Mark-san,
One of my Korean-Chinese friends teaches Japanese at a private high school. She is a diligent and professional teacher, and of course she speaks excellent Japanese. But she complains of her students being naughty and lazy once in a while.
There are about forty students in each of her classes. She says that only twenty percent of them study relatively hard and thirty percent just average. Half of a class is out of control, and those hooligans often interfere with her class.
Hooligans’ parents are also hooligans. They does not show any interest in their children’s performance at school. The principal is just a merchant at heart. He does not want teachers to be hard on students, who are customers for his school.
It is tough being a teacher.
May 13th, 2006 at 12:35 am
Tough! Tough!! I am just curious about how you dealt with it eventually? Are they able to make it better and get some progress in the next assignments? Those are questions and goals that the PARENTS should concern about and really put efforts in it. It’s THEM who can make the kids understand that they must fulfill their work…
REALLY TOUGH TO BE A TEACHER!! Tai-hen ne!!
May 13th, 2006 at 3:00 am
Well, after seeing him lie to both of us so blatantly, his mom hasn’t doubted anything I’ve said about his homework problems since. I doubled ALL of his homework that he hadn’t turned in over the last month, which probably amounted to about 8 hours in total. He did it all and gave it to me tonight. I still have to listen to the tapes and make sure they’re right, but I’ve already checked the books and they’re good.
May 13th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
If my 3 year old can lie with a straight face about stealing my 1 year old’s pacifier while holding it under the pillow, just imagine how sophisticated you get by the time you are Little Billy’s age. You handled it the right way, I think. Plus, given the nature of your school (the parents accept that their kids are going to a school where they can get kicked out if they repeatedly don’t do their homework), I think he got off easy.
If a student tries to lie to me more than once, I will take it as far as I can go. It’s good that you got a positive end result.