Thursday, January 17, 2019

Milking the Injury


Middle school special ed U.S. history. The classes had been pretty good until 6th period. But, 6th period...

All boys. They came in loud. And I had to scold them to get settled at the bell.

Rico immediately called me over. He had to go to the health office. He hurt his hand.

The third and fourth knuckles on his right hand were purple with a bruise. It looked like he had hit something, hard.

Rico was goofing off. Loud. Not getting settled. So, I didn't really want to let him go. Because, he was clearly looking for an excuse not to work. But, those knuckles looked painful, and I'm not in the habit of denying students passes to the health office when they ask.

He wasn't gone long. He got some ice and returned. And now, it was all about how he couldn't do the assignment due to his hand.

The assignment was a timeline. They had been given a list of events during the Lewis & Clark expedition. They were to transfer those events to a preprinted timeline. Every other class finished by half way through the period.

But Rico "couldn't write". It "hurt too much". And I was reminded of the saying:
“If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.”
Rico was milking this excuse for all it was worth and then some.

And he was joined by two other boys who somehow couldn't get this timeline finished by the end of the period. Sigh. Middle school. Boys.

14 comments:

  1. Six period would be hard to teach. They are just ready to go home and be done with the day. But you are right, they still will try to find any reason not to do the work if they don't want to do it.

    betty

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  2. Yep. If there's a will, there's a way. I suppose he could have had someone pencil in his timeline for him?

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    1. I don't know if that would have worked for this assignment. But he wasn't all that interested in finding ways to do his work. If he had been trying, I would have found a way to help him.

      Delete
  3. Where there's no will, there is no way.

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  4. Yeah, school work does suck. Any excuse not to have to do it.

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  5. I wonder if he and the other two boys would've completed the timeline if they had to put their major events on a timeline.

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  6. Having worked with children, this seems to be a common occurrence.

    www.ficklemillennial.blogspot.com

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  7. Some people will milk what they can. I see it on my job is getting every little bit from state.
    Coffee is on

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  8. Ah, the old injured hand excuse. What a pain! And he couldn't type it on the computer either cos it was a timeline!

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    Replies
    1. I'm sure you're familiar. (And the teacher was very specific about them not doing anything on computers, too.)

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