How Am I Affecting Shane’s Grades?
My bias is showing.
Dylan and Shane are taking a class together. Whatever it’s technically called, it is a class that creates the high school morning announcement program. When they were required to pair up and work together, Dylan and Shane were happy to have each other as teammates.
But they were goofing around. They decided on “funny foods” for a category, for example.
Cheese is delicious. But cheese is a dairy food. You should not eat cheese if you are vegan.
While their creativity was awesome, and they were having a great time, there wasn’t much educational value in what they were creating. In fact, early in the year, the teacher emailed me and said that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to air any of Dylan’s and Shane’s pieces.
So I had a talk with both of them, explaining what they needed to do to make their skits more palatable to a wider audience.
And they fixed a lot. But their scripts were turned in late, their filming was done late, and their good time was taking a toll on their grades. I reminded them repeatedly that they needed to get their assignments done and turned in. This is something I never had to say to Shane before he started working with Dylan.
So when an assignment called “characterization” was missing, it reflected poorly – again – on both boys’ online grades. I immediately emailed Dylan.
You are still missing two assignments in Digital Art, and your Guitar 2 homework is still missing. There are THREE Z’s in math! You are even missing another assignment in TV Production. YOU are now affecting Shane’s grades, too!
Dylan had an answer for every item on the list. This was turned in, that was turned in, everything was already done, blah blah blah. But he was stumped about Shane.
How am I affecting Shane’s grades? We’re not doing team stuff anymore.
Uh-oh.
I emailed the teacher. The teacher responded: Both boys had neglected to turn in their individual assignments so both boys had missing work!
“Shane,” I said later, pointing at the online grade book. “What is this?”
“I don’t know,” Shane said. “I guess I forgot to turn that in.”
After seven years of monitoring Dylan’s missing work, I learned that Shane is capable of forgetting, too.
I had to apologize to Dylan for jumping to conclusions. Thankfully, he understood.
Dylan turned in all of his missing work, including the TV Production assignment, and had a clear slate within two days. And Shane turned in his missing work, too.
Even though it was only one assignment, I now know to be more careful when assuming that Dylan is responsible for every missing paper on the planet. And I know that Shane is a fallible human, too.
What I did is not just embarrassing, but bad mothering. So I publicly vow to be more careful in the future.