Think About It: What's Your Excuse THIS Time?
It seems clear to me that the youth of America is powerfully lacking in the department of creativity. When I was a kid, I would go out with my friends and have epic adventure centering around the fact that one of them was, in reality, the evil Cobra Commander and it was up to the rest of us to stop him from kidnapping all the world's leaders and ransoming them for all the donuts he could eat. Even when we played with action figures, the adventures were of our choosing -- like the time Optimus Prime and Spider-Man had to stop Skeletor from taking over Barbie's Dream House. (Sometimes we had to let my sister play.)
I'm not arguing that we were brilliant, but we were at least creative. Many kids these days will just stare at you blankly when you ask them to do anything creative. Tell you a story, describe a happy memory... hell, even writing a sentence using words on a vocabulary list are beyond many of their capabilities. If today's generation had been in charge when I was a kid, all of Barbieland would be speaking Skeletorese by now.
There is, however, one circumstance in which the youth of today can be creative quite quickly. This is in the area of excuses. I've become extremely well-aquainted with their plethora of excuses over the last month or so. If I were so inclined, I could compile an entire book of excuses ninth graders use for various things -- reasons they don't have their homework, reasons they don't have their books, reasons they're talking in class, reasons they need to be standing halfway across the room hiding in the tiny nook in the corner behind the air conditioner vent and playing with a lipstick tube stolen from the girl who sits in the next seat over, etc.
The trouble is, the book wouldn't work in the "How-To" section, because they aren't particularly good. And by "particularly" I mean "at all." This morning, for example, I gave a test on two short stories we've been reading and discussing in class over the last few weeks. Assorted students gave me assorted reasons they should not be given the test, all of which were pretty pathetic. For example, one kid tried to argue that I never told them they would be having a test.
"I announced it on Monday," I said. "Today is Friday. And we had a review Thursday."
"I wasn't here on Monday!"
"It's been written on the board since Monday, too."
"But you never said it to me!"
In fairness, I suppose I did give this student too much credit when assuming he was capable of reading six-inch tall bright green letters on a white board that read "ENGLISH I TEST, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. TEST WILL COVER 'A SOUND OF THUNDER' AND 'POISON'." Next time he's absent, I should personally escort him to the board and rub his nose against the words like a naughty dog who piddled on the carpet.
Another student's dismay was caused by the fact that I wasn't going to review the material before they took the test.
"We spent half the class reviewing yesterday."
Another one chimed in. "I wasn't here yesterday!"
"You were here the entire time we were reading and discussing the stories and you knew all week you needed to study for this. I don't need to give you a review at all. The word 'review' implies you should know it already."
"But I wasn't heeeeeeeere!"
My personal favorite, though, was the student who whined, "Man, I forgot everything in that story." And there was a distinct implication in his voice that he forgot it on purpose. The story we finished a week ago. And had not yet been tested on. I do not know yet if I am allowed to give a comprehensive midterm in this class, but if I can, I'm gonna blow this kid's mind.
Then there are the kids who have excuses for talking in class. They very rarely try to claim they weren't making noise. Rather, they try to argue semantics.
"I wasn't talking, I was singing."
"I wasn't talking, I was rapping."
"I wasn't talking, I was whispering."
"Is sound coming out of your mouth?" I reply. "Then stop it."
"Oooh, Mr. Petit, we can't even sing in this class?"
"NO! My policy is quite simple: if you want to sing, join the choir. I've heard them. They're quite good."
The best, though, is "I was talking to myself!" When I mentioned this to another teacher today, he said, "Maybe I'll try that. I'll just stand in front of the board mumbling and when they ask me what I'm doing I'll just say, 'Oh, I'm teaching to myself'." Most of them, unfortunately, would never know the difference.
There's a kid in one of my classes -- let's call him Fred. (This is not his name. His name is Eduardo.) This kid is -- I'm looking for a delicate way to say this -- a bigger liar than Pinocchio and Kobe Bryant combined. He constantly lies, and he lies pointlessly. And no matter how many times I call him on it, give him punish work or refer him to the office, he keeps doing it. And the thing that makes this all the more tragic is that he's terrible at it. He can walk into my class with a pack of candy and open it right in front of me. I tell him to put it away. Five minutes later he's chewing something, I see something green in his mouth and there's an unmistakable aroma of chemically processed berry flavoring in the air. But when I give him punish work for eating candy in class, he tells me -- and I quote -- "I was chewing my tongue!"
One day I had enough of it. "I can see in your mouth, you know," I said. "If your tongue is that shade of green, you'd better get to a doctor."
This child has also told me, at various times, that he wasn't drinking the soda on his desk, he just "had it out," that he wasn't the one making whistling sounds despite the fact that his lips were pursed, the sounds were coming directly from the viscinity of his desk and that I had already told him three times to stop whistling, and (my personal favorite), that he had written the short story we were reading in class. This is a child with no work ethic, needless to say. He doesn't like to read, he doesn't like to write -- as far as I can tell, lying is the only thing he enjoys, and while it is quite possible to make a good living in this country even though dishonesty is your only marketable skill, this child is simply too bad at it to ever get much further than getting a job as that weirdo who wears tinfoil on his head and knows exactly when the aliens are going to attack.
I don't mean to imply there are no good kids in my classes, friends. In fact, the good kids vastly outnumber the bad ones. But I've gotta be honest, the good ones don't give you very good stories to write about. So while I would prefer they learn to behave, pay attention and get as good a grade as possible, as long as they insist on playing games, there's no reason I can't draw a little amusement from them, right?
Blake is also amused by some of the (really, really) wrong answers on his tests, but he's not gonna share those online. Ask him in person sometime. Contact him with comments or suggestions at BlakePT@cox.net, visit him on the web at Evertime Realms, or visit the Evertime Livejournal,
blakemp.
I'm not arguing that we were brilliant, but we were at least creative. Many kids these days will just stare at you blankly when you ask them to do anything creative. Tell you a story, describe a happy memory... hell, even writing a sentence using words on a vocabulary list are beyond many of their capabilities. If today's generation had been in charge when I was a kid, all of Barbieland would be speaking Skeletorese by now.
There is, however, one circumstance in which the youth of today can be creative quite quickly. This is in the area of excuses. I've become extremely well-aquainted with their plethora of excuses over the last month or so. If I were so inclined, I could compile an entire book of excuses ninth graders use for various things -- reasons they don't have their homework, reasons they don't have their books, reasons they're talking in class, reasons they need to be standing halfway across the room hiding in the tiny nook in the corner behind the air conditioner vent and playing with a lipstick tube stolen from the girl who sits in the next seat over, etc.
The trouble is, the book wouldn't work in the "How-To" section, because they aren't particularly good. And by "particularly" I mean "at all." This morning, for example, I gave a test on two short stories we've been reading and discussing in class over the last few weeks. Assorted students gave me assorted reasons they should not be given the test, all of which were pretty pathetic. For example, one kid tried to argue that I never told them they would be having a test.
"I announced it on Monday," I said. "Today is Friday. And we had a review Thursday."
"I wasn't here on Monday!"
"It's been written on the board since Monday, too."
"But you never said it to me!"
In fairness, I suppose I did give this student too much credit when assuming he was capable of reading six-inch tall bright green letters on a white board that read "ENGLISH I TEST, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. TEST WILL COVER 'A SOUND OF THUNDER' AND 'POISON'." Next time he's absent, I should personally escort him to the board and rub his nose against the words like a naughty dog who piddled on the carpet.
Another student's dismay was caused by the fact that I wasn't going to review the material before they took the test.
"We spent half the class reviewing yesterday."
Another one chimed in. "I wasn't here yesterday!"
"You were here the entire time we were reading and discussing the stories and you knew all week you needed to study for this. I don't need to give you a review at all. The word 'review' implies you should know it already."
"But I wasn't heeeeeeeere!"
My personal favorite, though, was the student who whined, "Man, I forgot everything in that story." And there was a distinct implication in his voice that he forgot it on purpose. The story we finished a week ago. And had not yet been tested on. I do not know yet if I am allowed to give a comprehensive midterm in this class, but if I can, I'm gonna blow this kid's mind.
Then there are the kids who have excuses for talking in class. They very rarely try to claim they weren't making noise. Rather, they try to argue semantics.
"I wasn't talking, I was singing."
"I wasn't talking, I was rapping."
"I wasn't talking, I was whispering."
"Is sound coming out of your mouth?" I reply. "Then stop it."
"Oooh, Mr. Petit, we can't even sing in this class?"
"NO! My policy is quite simple: if you want to sing, join the choir. I've heard them. They're quite good."
The best, though, is "I was talking to myself!" When I mentioned this to another teacher today, he said, "Maybe I'll try that. I'll just stand in front of the board mumbling and when they ask me what I'm doing I'll just say, 'Oh, I'm teaching to myself'." Most of them, unfortunately, would never know the difference.
There's a kid in one of my classes -- let's call him Fred. (This is not his name. His name is Eduardo.) This kid is -- I'm looking for a delicate way to say this -- a bigger liar than Pinocchio and Kobe Bryant combined. He constantly lies, and he lies pointlessly. And no matter how many times I call him on it, give him punish work or refer him to the office, he keeps doing it. And the thing that makes this all the more tragic is that he's terrible at it. He can walk into my class with a pack of candy and open it right in front of me. I tell him to put it away. Five minutes later he's chewing something, I see something green in his mouth and there's an unmistakable aroma of chemically processed berry flavoring in the air. But when I give him punish work for eating candy in class, he tells me -- and I quote -- "I was chewing my tongue!"
One day I had enough of it. "I can see in your mouth, you know," I said. "If your tongue is that shade of green, you'd better get to a doctor."
This child has also told me, at various times, that he wasn't drinking the soda on his desk, he just "had it out," that he wasn't the one making whistling sounds despite the fact that his lips were pursed, the sounds were coming directly from the viscinity of his desk and that I had already told him three times to stop whistling, and (my personal favorite), that he had written the short story we were reading in class. This is a child with no work ethic, needless to say. He doesn't like to read, he doesn't like to write -- as far as I can tell, lying is the only thing he enjoys, and while it is quite possible to make a good living in this country even though dishonesty is your only marketable skill, this child is simply too bad at it to ever get much further than getting a job as that weirdo who wears tinfoil on his head and knows exactly when the aliens are going to attack.
I don't mean to imply there are no good kids in my classes, friends. In fact, the good kids vastly outnumber the bad ones. But I've gotta be honest, the good ones don't give you very good stories to write about. So while I would prefer they learn to behave, pay attention and get as good a grade as possible, as long as they insist on playing games, there's no reason I can't draw a little amusement from them, right?
Blake is also amused by some of the (really, really) wrong answers on his tests, but he's not gonna share those online. Ask him in person sometime. Contact him with comments or suggestions at BlakePT@cox.net, visit him on the web at Evertime Realms, or visit the Evertime Livejournal,
blakemp.