February 09, 2007~~3:13 p.m.
Frustration.

Shoe did it again.

His English teacher has been on jury duty for the last four weeks and the class has had assorted subs during that time. Apparently, no one was paying any attention to how the kids were doing, big picture, while the regular teacher was away. As a result, Shoe went four weeks without turning in a single assignment, giving him a 34% in the class for the current grading period which will end next Friday. A straight "A" student begins suddenly failing every single assignment and no one does a thing. That is not quality education, people. That is ... lame.

We found out on Wednesday. I'm calm now, but I wasn't then.

So many people screwed up for it to come to this and, given that this is not the first time this has happened, parenting-wise, I have no idea what I am supposed to do to help it not happen again. Because of the school's role in this, the teacher is being very cooperative, letting him do the work he failed to do for full credit (instead of the usual 50% credit for late work - which wouldn't be enough credit to bring up his failing grade), and allowing him to retake the vocabulary tests that he failed. She hopes to get him back up to a B by the end of next week because a grade lower than that could prevent him from being allowed to take Advanced English 9 next year.

Seriously, though... four weeks?! No one looked at how these kids were doing for FOUR WEEKS?! Yes, he screwed up. He lied to us about not having homework. He made bad choices. He is a major part of this... BUT... he is 13 years old, a child. Had we been informed when he'd failed a week of homework/tests, we could easily have gotten him back on track. It never would have come to this.

And the husband. Ugh. Honestly, I could have killed him on Wednesday. Because he is the first one home and because I dealt with the whole gigantic issue two years ago when the sixth grade teacher let him get 80-something assignments behind before contacting us, he assumed responsibility for checking homework against Shoe's planner each night. Well, Shoe has been having a great 8th grade year. He's done well getting everything finished in a reasonable amount of time. He's been more organized on his own. He's been very responsible. SO... the husband decided, without any discussion, that he would cut Shoe a little slack.

Yea. What a great *reward*... enough rope to hang himself.

Now, it would seem an honest mistake... if the SAME FREAKING EXACT THING DIDN'T HAPPEN LAST YEAR. Ugh. How flippin' stupid is this man I married?!

So, in summary. Shoe screwed up by lying about not having homework when he really did. The school screwed up by having no one responsible for paying attention to the performance of this teacher's students while she was away. The husband screwed up by not staying on top of something that he had accepted responsibility for. And I screwed up by trusting someone else to manage this whole thing and by, apparently, failing to teach Shoe how not to be a bigfathairy liar.

I do not know how to make sure this doesn't happen again. And next year will be worse. Grades "count" and high school teachers really don't want to deal with "mommies". And, worse than that, given his apparent inclination to do whatever he thinks he can get away with... is he going to grow up and be able to keep a job? pay his rent? Is this kid going to be back living with me when he's 40?

Holy fucking crap. How do I get off this ride?

~Alice