Depression 101

Yesterday my students had an assignment due, big project, test grade and all that.
When the first class started to roll in, the excuses rolled in with them. I knew in advance that many of them had waited nearly six weeks to begin working on the research. You can tell by the questions they ask where they are in the process.
The first "problem" I encountered was a student who had emailed me the assignment.I promise you that if I had asked him to email it, he would have gone to Kinko's and printed it out and put it in a five dollar binder. But, since I asked him to print out three pages, he just sent it electronically. The school district doesn't provide me with in class printing, so this makes an extra trip somewhere for me to print this out for grading...you get the picture. The kid screws with you and makes it more difficult than it needs to be.
Next is Miss Technology who has her assignment on a key chain. She just needs to pop it into my computer and print it out. THERE IS NO PRINTER IN THIS CLASSROOM!!!! These kids come from homes in a very upper middle class suburb. Some live in McMansions and have BMW's in the school parking lot. The least of them have a higher standard of living than 95% of the world's population, but they can't afford paper and ink for a damned printer.
In each class period all day long, I had around 5 or 6 out of 30 to 35 who just didn't do the assignment at all. Those are the ones who tell you they left it on the computer table at home. If they had done it, they'd have just said they forgot it. But the computer table ploy is supposed to make you believe that it must really be done, or it wouldn't be right there beside the old Dell.
It is the same every time you ask these kids to do any assignment more involved than filling in the blanks.
Speaking of which. I also gave a quiz yesterday. The material was very limited. One chapter, one worksheet. Correct answers provided by way of review the day before the quiz. Grades on quiz...either 100 or 50. It's so easy that if you are trying at all you get them all right, but the problem is so few are trying.
We can't dumb this down any further, and inflate the grades any more. And the scary part is these kids all think that they are challenged and prepared to go to college.
No Child Left Behind, my sweet Aunt Fanny!!
Speaking of Congress...I suggest that we vote out the entire House of Representatives and such members of the Senate as will stand for re-election in November. They seem to have lost track of the "for the people" aspect of our government. They've been working for Goldman Sachs and AIG for so long, they have had to take a brief recess to regroup and figure out how to respond to the loss of the American economy.Thank God for a Yom Kippur or they'd have had to work a full week.
W. came out in the yard to assure concerned Americans yesterday. It was no fireside chat. He just isn't able to pull off concerned, it isn't in his repertoire. You know what I'd like to hear him say? "Hey ya'll, I'm really sorry that I haven't paid attention. I know now that the President of the United States can't be on the bike trail while Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Wall Street Bankers call the shots. I see now that what they mean about the wrong war and about the Bill of Rights and about the Constitution, and about telling the truth." I never intended to collapse the whole world economy. I just wanted to help a few rich buddies insure that they got richer and that we set things up where we'd just get you used to being lied to by the government and be afraid of anyone that doesn't look like you."
Yeah, I'd like to hear him cop to some of the blame for the dogpile we're in.
And how about that John McCain. Yesterday, he actually got booed by his own supporters for denying their irrational claims about Obama. It made me feel a little better about Senator McCain that he is willing to stop short of total indecency and say the truth about his opponent, even if it means that he might lose the election. I don't think the Palin woman will stop no matter what catastrophe her lying hyperbole causes.
I read a blog by some older lady who was writing about Palin the other day. Significant-other in-law sent it to me, and it made me laugh outloud to read this 82 year old woman's rant against Palin. In my experience great grandmothers don't use those words!
So what's the upside? It's Saturday morning and most of the household chores are done. It's OU weekend and Texas has a team with at least an outside chance of coming away with a win. Monday there is no school, so I have three entire days to luxuriate in time away from the ne'er-do-well adolescents. And Obama is way up in the polls.