It’s
“Back to School” time, and soon you will be getting clever excuses from some of
your students. Whether you are a
teacher, parent, or manager, the following principles apply.
Handling excuses
It
used to be “my dog ate the homework”; now it’s “my computer ate the homework”
(a hard drive crash) or “my printer’s not working.” One excuse has not changed
over the years, and that’s the famous “I forgot.”
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| Courtesy www.i-am-bored.com |
As
a college instructor with three decades of experience, my empathetic response
is generally, “That’s sad. You can still get the homework in with a late
penalty.” And then I might ask, “What
can you learn from this experience so that it doesn’t happen again?” After the student says “I don’t know,” I
might make some suggestions such as backing up files or, in the case of a broken
printer, downloading your homework to a thumb drive and printing it somewhere
else. If you can get a student to say this himself or herself, it will be much
more powerful.
“But
I had an opportunity to go to a One Direction concert last night.” Your tricky response to that could be “I
understand completely, and you can still get your assignment in with a late
penalty.” It doesn’t matter what the
student says next; your response is this:
“I guess you had to make a choice. If I were you, I would have chosen
the One Direction concert, too. I understand. Of course, our choices in life
bring consequences.” And then the
follow-up: “What can you learn from this experience?” After the student says “I don’t know,” you
can point out that waiting to the last moment to do an assignment is risky, but
that’s a choice, too.
My
favorite excuse while teaching college was “my grandmother died.” After checking with other instructors, I
discovered that this woman’s grandmother had died five times over the past few
years. She just used the excuse over and
over with different teachers and at different times. I sat down with the student and asked her for
the secret of life. She looked puzzled. “How do you get your grandmother to
come back to life every class? How many
times has she died now?” We had a good
laugh, but she still faced the unexcused absence and the late homework penalty.
The great secret
of education
We
teachers teach students, not subjects, and that includes helping students
understand certain things about life. The most important, from an educational
standpoint is this: You are responsible for you. You
are in charge of your life and your education. My responsibility is to teach; your responsibility is to learn.
I
often hear, “You gave me a bad grade.”
My response: “I don’t give grades.
You earn them.” A person grows by
accepting responsibility for their life without blaming others and
circumstances. If my own child gets a
“crummy teacher,” my response is, “Good. You’ll have a crummy boss someday and
this will teach you how to deal with that.
One
of my favorite questions came from a very capable young man, “What’s the
minimum I have to do to get an A?” Did
he just say “minimum”? Well, you earn an A by
providing superior work, not by doing the minimum. That’s an erroneous perception.
I’ve
seen students put great effort into trying to do as little as possible,
creating excuses, and getting out of stuff (such as the dead grandma story). I often congratulate them on their
creativity, but also reason with them: “Well, you can always just do the work
and learn something.”
Whether
you are a teacher, parent, or manager, it’s important to think through your
pre-emptive strike; that is, provide a clear explanation of expectations beforehand. Good luck in the new school year!
Keep
teaching, keep learning, and keep living.
