A Likely Story

It was one of those "severe" special ed classes where the high school aged kiddos are doing second grader work. The teacher had helpfully left a list of all the students and the things I should look out for.

It was fourth period. Math. They were doing worksheets where they were counting change.

They complained. "Math is for little kids..."

Well, um, I took math in college. Calculus. Applied analysis. Math is for adults too. But they weren't buying that.

But after the initial complaint, most of them got to work.

Except for Jeremiah.

Jeremiah didn't need to do the work. He knew it already. And he quickly changed the subject.

First, he had a headache. He needed to get medicine from his sister who was in class two doors down.

Not long thereafter, the conversation turned to lunch. Lunch is after fifth period. He said his lunch was after fourth. Because he was a senior. (There were only ninth and tenth graders in class.) When I pointed out that seniors had the same lunch as underclassmen, he said seniors had a different lunch at the school his brother went to, which was in another district.

Then he wanted to know if I was going to go to his game that night. One of the aides then chimed in with, "I thought you didn't have a game tonight."

And around and around it went. Jeremiah would either say something that was easily proven false, or he would say two things that contradicted each other. (He has a sibling at the same school or his siblings go to another school? Both could be true, of course, but then other "siblings" showed up in the conversation.)

By the end of the period, the rest of the class had finished their math assignment. Jeremiah? Hadn't even started it.

If only they put half as much effort into doing the work as they do in avoiding it.