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Summer school and the living is easy

To be honest, summer school is somewhat boring. All of the lessons are pretty much scripted ("week 2, day 4") and most of the work is on demand so there is quite a bit of my wandering around while the students are working. On the plus side, I don't have to grade anything. I look at it and if it's what I asked for, the student moves on. If not, we chat about it and student has to re-do it.

Of course, I have one student who pretty much refuses to re-do anything. I've talked til I'm blue in the face. I've explained. I've given strategies. I've warned that this quality of work will not receive a passing grade. So far the student has remained firming in the camp of "I wrote something and put my name on it, therefore I pass". S/He even had the gall to tell me that writing a 5 sentence essay (vs. 5 paragraph) received an 'A' in the regular school year. It was really hard not to point out (again) that if S/He had nothing to learn or skills to improve, s/he wouldn't be attending summer school. I also had to point out that actually, all sophomores have to pass the reading/writing WASL to graduate.

Apparently, we still have students coming out of the middle school (where there are no reparcussions for failing all courses) who believe that they will graduate in 4 years because they attended were enrolled for 4 years. I fully understand that nothing is gained by holding students back in middle school, but seriously, there has to be some way to convince them that sitting on their ass for the rest of their lives isn't going to get them anywhere. Also, it might help if the town wasn't full of fools who sit on their asses all the time and don't care that they live in like something out of Deliverance.

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