All Apologies

I spent three days in the middle school art class. Three of the classes were pretty good. One was freakish (read: silent). And the fifth...well...

There's always that one period.

Three students could not sit still, and these boys were constantly out of their seats for random reasons. One girl was just rude. (She didn't start the age question, but she was there, trying to get it out of me.) As a group they wouldn't settle long enough for me to explain their assignment. And that was on top of the usual middle school stuff I expect.

But it was one period out of the day, so for the most part it was a pleasant assignment. I left my usual note with my email address attached just in case the teacher had any questions for me. Teachers don't usually contact me, so I was surprised to get an email from her.

She thanked me for covering her classes. And she said she had something for me. It turned out to be a stack of apology letters from the difficult class.

Oooh. I love apology letters.

I can tell what sort of conversation the teacher had with them from the tone of the letters. Certain themes were repeated. For example, from rude girl:

Dear Ms. A

Sorry for my poor behavior. I know you deserve more respect than what you got out of us. I know you were trying your hardest to keep us under control but I still chose to mis-behave, so again I'm sorry. I'll actualy try to be well behaved.

I hope they're better for the next sub. It'll be interesting to see if they've learned anything from this. Would I cover the class again? Sure. Like I said, the other four classes were just fine.

Sort of Sorry

On any given day I take down all sorts of notes. Ideas. Things I'll tweet when I get Twitter access. Blog posts. World building. After a while, I have sheets and sheets of random stuff.  

I finally got around to going through one of these stacks, and I found these two letters of apology from students. They had been posted on the wall of a classroom, and as I had time (as the class was watching a video), I copied them. I figured I could use them as my blog post for that day until something more interesting happened. I filed the page away with my other notes.

As I have nothing interesting to post about today, I thought I'd (finally) share these. I've left off identifying names, but otherwise I copied the things word for word. Spelling, word choice, and punctuation are all theirs.

Hey Ms. A. I just wanna say sorry for every thing I put you through. Even tho I didnt throw anything I felt like you always blame me. I hope we can be cool again like we used to be before like when school started. You know I love you :D lmfno
From Your Student...

This next one I love for the P.S.S.

Dear Mrs. A.
Im sorry for being a complete excuse my language butthole. Cause a pretty woman like you should not be stressed out with horrible student's like I was. Now I have changed, Im going finally become the one thing I wanna be a supersmodel. But yes I am sorry Mrs. A you are awesome and pretty. And promise not to be mean anymore.
From:
P.S.: Im sorry :)
P.S.S.: Can I have some blueberry pancakes?

I was actually kind of impressed with the grammar in these. While not perfect, I've seen such letters that are much worse. And even though these were handwritten, the emoticons were written in as they would have been typed.

By the way, does anyone know what lmfno stands for?  

Written Excuses

It's time to go back into the vaults and see what I can come up with. Today's selection was first posted on April 24, 2007. 

It was one of those video days. The 10th graders were watching Julius Caesar (they're reading the play as a class), and I needed something to do so that I didn't do something drastic as they were not paying attention to the TV.

The teacher had this stack of letters on his desk. From what I could gather, they had some major essay assignment that many of them did not do. As punishment, or maybe as follow-up, the teacher gave them all detention and made them write letters explaining why they did not do the assignment. I had some time, so I flipped through them.

It reminded me of the time that I had a group of seniors who were just awful. Their teacher made them write me letters of "apology". I actually got them. And it was a stack of excuses and it-wasn't-mes. It was amazing how many of them were not at fault. I must have been imagining the bad behavior, then.

Anyway, these letters were similar in repetition. Several of them explained in detail how they did not have access to a computer, or rather, they had access, but their printers were out of ink. One student explained that he/she went over to an aunt's, and only after doing the work the cousin said that the computer had no printer.

A couple were more honest. One student talked of how he/she (I didn't look at the names as they were under the paperclip) just didn't want to do the assignment and he/she didn't think he'd/she'd get into trouble over it (taking the "F" was acceptable, though). And another student talked of plain old procrastination.

After about a dozen or so of these I got bored. It was the same whine over and over. And the grammar was a mess as well (you'd think that for the English teacher they'd try to make an effort--maybe they did).

Sometimes they just make me feel tired all over.

I think I still have those letters of apology somewhere. I should go and look...

Follow Up

I had this student in class again yesterday. And ever since that note, I like to keep an eye on her, just to see if she'll ever do work in class. Shocker: yesterday, she did actually work!

There was a lot of working going on. That is the mark of a good teacher. He's gotten his classes to the point where they sit down and do the assignment. These are the teachers that I like to sub for.

The Apology

Last Friday I had some difficulty with 3rd period. I left a note with names. (Well, I left two names and two descriptions as I was unable to get names for the other two.) Today I was subbing in the room next door.

The teacher next door recognized the miscreants from their descriptions, and all involved had a nice little talk with the assistant principal. Two of them decided that they weren't going to listen to the assistant principal either, and they got suspended. I'm not sure what happened to the third except that he received some consequence.

The fourth, a girl, owned up to her part in getting named. She got off with having to write me a letter of apology. It read:

Dear Ms. A,

Im writing this letter of apology to you for being disrespectful, loud, and abnoxtious with you in 3rd period on friday September 17, 2009 in Ms K's class room. If I ever have you as a sub again I promise you this will NOT happen again, Im going to try to best I can be and help other students stay on task as well.

im sorry for the inconvinience,
(name redacted)
please accept this apology.

(Note: the spelling and punctuation are all hers.)

She had me in class today. She did no work, but she was called out of class. She knew this was coming, so I can't fault her for not starting something she was going to have to put away after five minutes.

So, what do you think? Should I accept her apology? (I'm prone to, as she owned up to her part and took her consequence seriously.)