My juniors had an incredible debate today, even if they struggled with the words sometimes, during an anticipation guide for The Great Gatsby.  (Big love to Simply Novel – Secondary Solutions for the unit plan!)  It was cool to watch them defending their opinions to each other and trying to persuade the rest of the class to agree with them.

On the flip side, my freshmen are ready to make me bang my head against my desk.  “Miss, who’s Rowdy?”  Really?  You chose to write an essay about a character that you don’t know?  “Miss, I didn’t read the book.” Okay, but we read two-thirds of the book in class, so you didn’t read it or listen???? “I didn’t do my homework, Miss.” Yeah, well, I can’t help you with that.  And the millions of excuses?  They don’t cut it.

Today I learned that my students believe these are all viable excuses:

• I fell asleep so couldn’t do it.
• I had a game.
• My sister had a sleep study so I didn’t get home until 3am (and didn’t bring it to the hospital to work on, either).
• I never read the book.
• I don’t do homework.

I would like to cry now.