Tag: Carter

Carter + homework? Is going to be the end of me. Yesterday was another great day at school for all of them. Even better, Carter came skipping in the door saying, “I don’t have any homework! We did all our math in class today.” Praise God, because I wasn’t up for another handholding/standoff that evening. Besides, it was the first rugby practice of the fall, so the boys got home at 4:15, grabbed a snack, threw on cleats and uniforms and we were out the door by 4:45.

By the time we got home it was 7. The boys showered, ate dinner, and then had a few minutes to relax before  they had to get ready for bed. Even though they didn’t have homework, I had lots of it. They each brought home papers from their teachers to be filled out by me: What are your hopes for your student for this year? How does your child learn best? What is your child’s greatest academic weakness? Is there anything I need to know about your child to help him or her succeed?

All of it is essential information for teachers to have, but you should have seen me staring cross-eyed at the pages: “Which kid is this form for? Is this the one that cries and throws a tantrum when he is overtired or am I writing about the one who thinks he can’t do anything right if he doesn’t get it perfect the first time? And how much of this do I reveal up front and what should I leave to be discovered as a “happy” accident?”

As I’m putting papers back in their folders, I pull out Carter’s homework book and find that not only does he have homework for tonight, but he has an assignment that he completely overlooked the night before. Good grief. In the chaos of the drama over his math assignment, I didn’t even notice that he was supposed to create a “mind map” (basically a brainstorming diagram) about himself.

I burst his happy, computer game playing bubble as I pointed out that he actually had two assignments that needed to be completed that he had written in his homework book himself, plus one from the night before and by now it was 8:00 and almost time for bed. He was supposed to check out 3 math resource websites online (easy) and then “tell someone about VCOP.” We quickly looked at the math websites. “Great, all done with that. Now tell me about VCOP.”

Carter: “I don’t know what it means. She told us in class, but I forgot.”
Me (prompting): What subject were you studying when she talked about it? Does it have to do with the classroom rules? How can you not remember if you wrote down that you were supposed to talk to me about it?”
Carter (sighing): I don’t know, she wrote it down on the board and talked about it some, but I only remember the V stands for ‘vocabulary.'”
Me: (head meets wall)

Giving up on VCOP, I whipped out a sheet of paper and said, “Here, you need to do the mind mapping assignment that you forgot to do last night. Write down six things about yourself. You should be able to do this quickly.” Carter was of the opinion that it could not be done quickly and it was the most horrible, awful assignment ever given, and why did he have to do it if he couldn’t think of anything to write. He sighed and scrawled and erased and scribbled for a few minutes, declared that he couldn’t think of anything else to write about himself, and stomped his way upstairs when I gave him the choice of “finish or head to bed.” This is what I was left with: