BABY BOY HAS A TWIN

Life is so much easier now that BABY BOY has left the nest. I had to keep a tight leash on that one or the school would have been burned to the ground. Now, however, a new BABY BOY has taken his place.

This one is not in special education, on the contrary, he's considered GIFTED. His problem is he's.....LAZY!

If I didn't see him blink every once in awhile, I'd have to check his pulse, just to be sure he was still with the living.

Last semester I had him for both Social Studies and Reading. He did almost no assignments and almost every day, at least one of his 4 teachers, me included, would pull mom and/or dad aside, when they came to pick him up, to discuss his "lack of motivation." This went on for the ENTIRE SEMESTER. Then when report cards came out Mom and Dad acted shocked by the grades.

"We'll have a talk with him and things will change." YA, RIGHT?!

So on Monday when school started back up, I find out from his homeroom teacher that Mom wants to pull him from my reading group because I'm just expecting too much. After 21 years I know not to fight this one, especially now, when I know I will not get any support from the office.

I still have him for Social Studies and I'm the only one teaching this, so I'm not sure how things are going to get easier for him...anyway...

On Wednesday his group comes in and we begin our Social Studies lesson. The kids get their notebooks, pencils and books. We discuss the EXPLORER OF THE DAY, and they begin taking notes from the overhead. As I'm walking around I see LAZY just sitting in his seat with his notebook closed. I ask him if he is done and he says, yes. I ask to see the notes. He flips through his notebook and says, "Hmmm? I can't find it?" I ask for the notebook and flip through it and it's TOTALLY BLANK!!!!! I then had a little chat with him in the coat area and I said, "Not only are you refusing to do what I ask, but now you're lying to me about it. It's the second semester and I'm done playing games. You've earned yourself a discipline slip."

At the end of the day I see the homeroom teacher hand Dad the discipline slip and explain the situation. LAZY begins to cry and then Dad comes over to talk to me and I retell the story of what happened. I also reiterated that LAZY is not a discipline problem and is quite capable of doing the work, but is refusing to and I am hoping that this will kind of wake him up. All Dad said was "ok," and left. The homeroom teacher told me that LAZY said to Dad that he felt pressured to say that he was done even though he wasn't.

Then today, Mom comes in at the beginning of the day and hands me the discipline slip (The slips have to be signed by the parents.), I thank her and she walks out the door. I look down at the slip and see that at the top she has written, "I am very unpleased that you found this necessary."

SHE'S MAD AT ME!!!!!!!

I'm expecting that in the next few days I'll probably be called into the office. I'm not sure what she expects me to do about this issue and I'll be !@#$% if I'm going to put this kiddo on some type of modification plan, like giving him a sticker every 2 minutes for doing what he's suppose to do anyway.