After a week of no calls for ride requests and no calls to be excused, I sent K a letter saying how sorry we were that she was no longer interested in Family Literacy. If she wished, she could call and get back on the wait list. I knew she had a doctor's appointment and a court date last week, but that would excuse her only two of the days. She had given me a phone number, so I assumed her phone was connected, but I didn't call her this time. I had done that enough.
After she got the letter, she did manage to find a phone and call me to complain about how I kicked her out of the program. She said she had waited for me to pick her up on Monday. Of course, when I had showed up the week before when she hadn't called, I was greeted rudely. I explained our rules and she said she didn't care and hung up.
I felt very badly and yet know that I need to enforce absences needing to be excused. We are probably generous with three unexcused absences. We are teaching these so-called "21st century skills"--and I sure one of them is reliability--as it always has been!
I have done this long enough to know that K may come back next year or the year after that with a greater level of maturity and ready to work. Right now we have one student who refused to sing in circle with her toddler three years ago because it was too babyish for her sophisticated 17 year old self. I don't remember why she left the program then, but she is back with her second son and I saw that although she doesn't always sing, she does participate on the more familiar tunes. And her attitude is so much better about her work and her attendance.
I asked my husband if any of his Notre Dame students had ever hung up on him. In the first place, his students never call him at home. And they certainly never hang up on him. They rarely miss an 8 am class so there is no need to be excused. What a difference in our educational worlds!
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