What was the Problem?
Dylan turned in nearly every assignment on time this quarter – and then he just stopped.
If it had been a football game, Dylan would have carried the football 98 yards. Then, for some reason, he put down the ball and took a nap.
During the final week of the quarter, Dylan did almost nothing. He figured he was “mostly caught up,” so he didn’t do anything that was due during the last week, and he didn’t work on the very few assignments that were MIA.
For example, Dylan had two pages of math to do. “He learned how to do the first half of both pages today,” the math teacher told me. “They are due by the end of the day on Friday.”
I passed along this information to Dylan. “I don’t have to do them today,” Dylan whined. “They’re not due until Friday!”
So Tuesday came and went. On Wednesday I suggested that he do his math homework. “You have a field trip on Friday,” I said. “So why don’t you get it in by Thursday?”
“It’s not due until Friday!” he shrieked at me. “I don’t need your deadlines when I know perfectly well when it’s due!”
As if he’d always known when everything was due.
So Thursday came, and Dylan went to hang out with friends after school. Then he went out to sing at an open mic night. In between the two, he did absolutely no homework. But he implied that he might turn in his math homework on Friday morning: “Can you drive me to school tomorrow? I want to get there early so I can turn in my math before the field trip.”
“Sure, Son,” we said. And Bill drove him to school early.
At 3:15 in the afternoon, Dylan called me: “I am so mad right now!” he seethed. Then he told me the story of how he had worked all day on his math homework, and he had worked on it on the bus both ways! And when he finally turned it in as the school day ended…
“It didn’t even change my grade!” he wailed. “I’m getting a C in my on-level math class!”
Gee, I thought. Maybe if you had turned in the homework earlier, you would have had time to do more to change your grade.
But he didn’t. He waited until the last possible second. And – in case that wasn’t bad enough – when he turned in the homework on Friday afternoon, at the last possible second, the homework was only half done. He did ONE of the two pages.
So Dylan is getting the lowest grade he’s ever gotten in math, and it’s happening during the one quarter when he turned in almost everything on time.
What was the problem?
He failed more than one quiz. He never studied. And when he did turn in his homework, even though it was technically ‘on time,’ it was turned in the day after it was due, so he only got half credit. And he was almost never prepared for his progress checks, meaning that he couldn’t show evidence that he’d been working on his math.
More than once, his teacher emailed me to tell me that Dylan was working on yesterday’s homework in class, and not doing his classwork when it was sitting right in front of him.
Dylan’s answer to all this?
“I can get it all done in 10 minutes.”
I guess he underestimated the time.
Dylan lost his electronics for the whole weekend – the only time this year.