Student Teacher Blues
You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. This old saying rings true for many teachers. You can give students as many opportunities to succeed as possible, but they have to meet you halfway with some effort and hard work. When this storyteller was just starting out in their teaching career, they dealt with a student that didn’t want to do any work.
Then, they encountered the student’s mom. After giving this kid a bunch of chances to make up work and retake tests he was caught cheating on, our storyteller had no choice but to fail him. They got a long, ranting email from the mom asking why they hadn’t entered grades for the kid’s missing assignments. For whatever reason, she had no idea her son was failing. Maybe she was clueless, or maybe she was in denial.