“Landon, you didn’t finish the ‘Excellent Elections’
assignment for Social Studies. Your grade’s
down to a D minus. You’ve got a 0/45 in
the grade book. What’s up?”
Landon turned around from the computer he was working at
and stared at me. He was frowning,
concentrating.
“It was due yesterday,” I reminded him. “You had two days in class this week to get
it done.”
Landon grinned.
“My bad.”
“Noooo. That’s not
going to cover this. Why isn’t it done?”
Landon’s eyes widened.
“I didn’t know that was due this
week.”
I swept my hand over to the homework board. “Excellent Elections – due Thursday” was
still written on the whiteboard.
“But I didn’t see
that,” Landon wailed.
I walked over to Landon’s notebooks sitting on the
desk. “And you should have written it in
your planner.” I flipped through the
pages to yesterday’s date. “You should
have written it right . . .” I stopped.
“Oh look. It is written down. Due Thursday,
just like we said.”
“But I didn’t know how
to do it,” Landon moaned.
His last remark caught Mrs. Oliver’s attention from
across the room. She was the para in his
Social Studies class. Her head popped up
like a chipmunk’s.
“Landon!” she said.
“I asked you several times in class if you needed any help and you always
told me you knew how to do it and you didn’t want me helping you.”
Landon winked one eye and pointed to Mrs. Oliver. “True dat!”
Mrs. Oliver and I exchanged glances. Landon reverted to “gangsta” talk when he was
running out of options.
“So you knew when
it was due, and how to do it,” I
summarized.
Landon pursed his lips together. His eyes narrowed and darted back and forth. Then, “I tried to do it last night, but the internet was down at our house.”
“All night?” I asked.
“The internet was down at your house all
last night?”
“No.” Pause. “Just
a little. But my dad said I had to go
to bed when it came back on.”
How far is he going
to take this?
“Did you tell your dad you hadn’t finished your
homework?”
“Yes.” Pause. “No.”
Pause. “What?”
I slowly enunciated.
“What did you tell your dad last night?”
Landon stared back several seconds and then slowly began
to smile. “I told him I finished it.”
I gave Landon a long sober stare. “What do you think he’ll say when he gets the
update on your grades Monday morning.”
His smile slowly faded.
A sad little puppy looked back.
“He’s not going to like that you lied to him,” I added.
His eyes suddenly widened. “You won’t tell him will you?”
“No. You’re going to tell him.” I opened up the grade book on my computer and
clicked the tab that showed contact information. “And you’re going to tell him now.” I located his dad’s phone number, and began
punching the numbers in on the phone.
“You know,” I continued, “If your dad’s going to get bad
news, it’s better coming from you
than an email.”
Man up kiddo. You’ll probably be giving your dad a lot
worse news than this in the years ahead.
Now Landon was desperate. “When he finds out I lied, he won’t let me go
to Ramon’s birthday party tomorrow.”
True dat, I
thought. True dat.
No comments:
Post a Comment