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It's truly horrifying how much damage a teacher's attitude can have on a child. Before we moved, our oldest daughter was in advanced classes and had even been accepted into the International Baccalaureate Program (which is unfortunately not offered in the small town that we moved to). After we moved, she had a teacher who seems to have the same unbending mentality as "Educator". She began the year doing well and adapting to her new environment until one teacher, I'll call her "Mrs N", began giving her a failing grade in Algebra part way through the first semester. Mrs N had not realized that our daughter was not an 8th grader until about half way through that semester, and that was coincidentally the same time that our daughter's grade began to decline. When we asked Mrs N why our daughter's grade had dropped, she basically told us, "Algebra is for 8th graders, and she does not belong in my class as a 7th grader. She needs to be put in Pre-Algebra so that she can understand the material." We explained that she had taken Pre-Algebra the previous year so she did not want to take the same class over again, and that when we worked with her on her Algebra homework, she was able to do it all on her own and she was having no problems comprehending anything that was being taught, so we were going to leave her in Algebra. We continued to follow her grades and saw that she was still getting A's and B's on all of her in-class and homework assignments, but all of her tests were D's and F's, which was why her grade was dropping so drastically. We finally had another meeting with Mrs N and the school administration and found out the “real” reason behind the inconsistency in her grades. The tests that were being given were about 50% actual Algebra problems and 50% essay questions asking the student to explain how to do the problems. She was getting the right answers on the problems, but because there's more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to doing math, our daughter was explaining how to do the problems her own way. Of course this was not Mrs N's way, so she was failing the essay portions of the test, thereby failing the test and failing the class. Unfortunately for our daughter, the administration backed up this teacher and refused to see how using a subjective test like that was completely asinine, hiding behind the “these types of tests have been approved by the school district” line. Up to this point, math had been our daughter's favorite subject and she would have swum through pools of alligators while suffering from a severe case of death to get to school. After this fiasco, she hated anything to do with school and would do anything; including making herself sick and ditching school, to avoid having to go, and this caused the rest of her grades to begin falling. We had to remove our daughter from the school and send her to live with family in a different state so she could finish her 7th grade year without being held back. And this year, the failing grade in Algebra made her repeat that class, and because we are in such a small town, Mrs N is the only Algebra teacher in the school. We were not going to force our daughter to deal with this again, so now we drive her 75 miles (round trip, twice a day) to a school in the next town to avoid putting her through a repeat of last year. Fortunately, our daughter has been able to recover and is doing well again this year. "Teachers" (and I use that term VERY loosely here) like "Educator" and “Mrs N” need to find a different vocation if they can't understand that different children have different needs and deal with it in an appropriate manner before they irreparably hurt an innocent child.

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Educator needs to wake up and learn that bored students - or even 'bored' students - aren't going to do work they find boring. I know - I was one of them. For nine years, I didn't have a single teacher who could reliably get me to turn in homework assignments. If I thought the assignments were boring, makework, or a waste of my time because I already knew the material, why on earth would I spend the time to do them? I thought school was about learning, not about doing makework assignments just because a teacher assigned them. I can understand if Educator is dealing with a classroom, or several classrooms, of upwards of 20 students. With the state of the public education system today, it's the students who suffer, mainly because they don't get a teacher who can afford to work one-on-one with anyone, let alone everyone. But that doesn't make the bright and gifted students lazy, or stupid, or any less bored by having to sit in classes set up to cater to the lowest common denominator.

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Most schools now post assignments and grades online so that parents are aware of what is expected of their children. Parents need to be on top of their children and make sure they do what they are supposed to do. Kids today expect everything to be fun and entertaining and teachers of this "Sesame Street" and MTV generation simply cannot make everything fun. Sorry but the multiplication tables have to be memorized. You need to learn to read. You need to learn that Afghanistan is not in South America. I do not accept late assignments nor do I offer make-up work unless the student was on a trip (traveling with volleyball team, school club or other "educational" trip) or there was a family emergency. Teachers already have to plan for multiple intelligence levels and multiple intelligences. Expecting them to help lazy kids make up what they should have done in the first place is not reasonable. As a mother, I make my kids do any "missed" assignment until it is done to my satisfaction, even if he/she gets 0 points for it. They learn quick that it is better to comply with teacher's expectations than comply with mine. Mine are too high according to my kids (chuckle).

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The answer Annie gave regarding "extra credit" simply does not wash. Part of the learning process is simply doing what is expected of them. "Extra credit" should be what it is EXTRA CREDIT....not instead of. These kids need to do the work assigned. Whats a techer suppose to do Let all 25 students in a classroom decide they don't want to do the assignment, and then ask the teacher for extra credit. I say make the children do the work assigned, and then and only then may extra credit be given.