As you may (or may not) know, my eldest man-child is currently being homeschooled for the remainder of the 2012-2013 school year. While I agree that homeschooling is a great alternative for children who have different challenges and issues that they are dealing with – I am beginning to wonder if it just would not be better to allow my son to fail the 7th grade and have to repeat it again come September.
Case in point – he had a 2 hour schooling session planned for yesterday. His teacher arrived, ready to go – and he decided he didn’t want to do anything. Would not talk with her, engage with her, and flat out told her that he did not (and would not) do any work yesterday. So after 30 minutes, she left. I don’t blame her a bit. She left him a review worksheet to do to give him some type of grade for yesterday. I nagged him all night long last night to do it – he refused. So I got him up at 10am this morning and nagged him till 12pm to get his ass out of bed and get it done. He zipped through it in an hour and had all but 3 questions wrong. He wrote down anything, some things didn’t make sense at all, and he wrote so small that I had a hard time reading what he wrote. When he realized that I had the answer key – he went OFF and attempted to tell me that his teacher had told him Monday that he could have the answer key to complete the worksheet. Well, considering his teacher was not even HERE since last Friday – I knew that was a bold-faced lie, and if she HAD wanted him to have it … she would have gave it to him yesterday when he was standing there in the living room with me instead of handing it to ME to check his work.
He’s had his netbook, XBox controller and his phone taken away from him … so now he’s resorted to using his computer in his room to get online and message friends and download stuff … which he was doing when he was supposed to be doing his work. So I’ve removed him from his room and made him sit at the kitchen table and do his worksheet. By the time he finishes futzing around with it, his teacher will be here and there will BE no time to make corrections to it – and he’s going to get an F on it. I know he is, because he has no desire to do it, he doesn’t care if he does it, and he doesn’t care what grade he gets.
He is of the mindset that school is a pain in the arse and not worth his time. Unfortunately, he won’t be getting any of his electronics back (I’ve since confiscated the power cord to the computer as well) until he can show me that he’s serious about his education and will be making an effort to do what is required of him instead of sitting back and ignoring everything except that damn box in his room.
