Monday, November 14, 2011

Two detentions for the price of one

Homework detention is something that I don't have to deal with too frequently because I give very little homework to students. In fact, my middle school students have only had to do one small homework assignment and one project for music this entire term. So what happens if students do not hand in their homework? Well...they get a homework detention.

Homework detentions happen at lunch to give the student extra time to work on the homework that was due. So I usually assume if students haven't handed their homework it can only mean they want to spend their lunch hour with me. A few weeks ago one student didn't want to spend lunch with me, so he told me he was Muslim student and had to go to the school mosque for Friday prayers. Since this must have been a recent conversion (he had never said anything about it previously and his friends seemed as surprised at this announcement as I was) I decided to wait outside the school gate on the street near a few parked cars to keep an eye on the mosque. When students came out of the mosque and he didn't show up, I knew we had a problem and I began trying to figure out what my next step of action would be. When one of his friends yelled from across the school yard 'why are you hiding behind that car?' and the offending student took off running down the street, I knew this was a huge problem. Unfortunately for him (very fortunate for me as this happened within 2 seconds of the student sprinting full speed) his 6 ft something tall and football built form tutor (form tutors are similar to homeroom teachers here) was walking up that very street. The football built form tutor yelled out the offenders name so loudly that even the birds stopped singing out of fear. After a harsh talking to from the tutor, the student followed me to detention with his head hung low in despair. Not only did he get detention with me for the remainder of lunch, he also had to serve another one after school with his form tutor because of his actions.

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