Dylan Did Not Like My Suggestion.
Dylan had a three-day weekend. He’s failing two classes and has C’s in everything else, except chorus. His angelic voice is getting him at least one A this semester.
There is nothing that he’s failing because of incompetency. He simply hasn’t turned in his work.
For the three-day weekend, I compiled a list of his English assignments. I suggested that he work with his dad on his Computer Science assignments. I suggested that he do English on Saturday and Sunday, and then on Monday we could go over, together, what he’s missing in his other classes.
Dylan did not like my suggestion.
“Just let me get it done,” he said. “I can do it my way and you will see that it’s completely done by Monday.”
Saturday and Sunday, he had friends over. We limited the time they could be here – and drove them home – so that Dylan would have extra time to work on all of the missing assignments.
There are seven days left in the quarter – in the semester – so we knew he would buckle down and do the work.
But we never saw him do the work. We saw him on texting on the cell phone, Snap-Chatting on the iPad, Face-Timing on the laptop.
On Monday evening, when I suggested that we go over the missing work for the other classes, he had one sentence written for something due in English.
I had suggested that he make a big pile of all the missing English work, printed out, since his English teacher prefers that late work be printed, rather than turned in online. And today he has a meeting with his English teacher to discuss what’s going on. But by Monday night, he hadn’t printed a single thing.
“I’ll print it all out tomorrow,” he said. “I’m too tired to do it now.” And he went to bed.
As far as I can tell, he did absolutely nothing for school this weekend. He swears he did, but I saw no effort.
I got up early and drove him to school so that he could get an hour’s worth of work done before the school day started.
I have no idea if that will happen, but I can guarantee one thing: the new quarter will bring new rules.