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First I need to say a big thanks to my brother for pointing me in the direction of allofmp3. I have found what I sought.

Anyway, today I was driving home from school and I started thinking about that 7 year letter again. I haven't located the one that I wrote to myself when I turned 21, but I was thinking about writing a new one now. Just sort of a draft of some of the things that I want to do in the next seven years or maybe just some things I hope for myself.

If I was going to write it today I might say that I hope I don't kill one of my students this year. That's pretty short term though. I had a moment today when I thought I might actually reach out and choke the kid. What I just hate is that I SPECIFICALLY never really send a project home for kids to do because I don't want to see what the parent can do. I want to see what the kid can do and therefore we get lots of time in class to complete projects. ANYWAY, we have embarked on a project to wrap up our time before we track out. Luckily for me, I found a way to incorporate a lot of objectives for Science, Social Studies, and Reading for this. This kid takes it home and doesn't bring anything back with him today. I gave the kids one thing to do: Write the commercial for your landform you will visit. Simple enough. They had a couple questions that needed to be answered within the commercial. We have talked, at length, about what makes a good commercial. I look over from helping some kids at the computers and I see that this one student, my little Dear, is not doing anything. I ask what the deal is and he admits that he can't do it because everything is at home. Dear is one of those kids that, on a daily basis, says or does several things that make me angry. I remain calm.

"Why is your research at home?"

"I was working on this at home."

"Dear, why were you working on this at home when I give you time every day to work?"

"My mom was helping me." Grrr...this is sending up the red flag

"Dear, that is fine. Why is your research not with you today?"

"I was working on it at home." He says this as if I am some how not getting it and very snotty. This is beginning to make my blood boil.

"Dear, there is no reason why this should be at home. We work on this EVERY day. Why would today be any different? You need to get out something else for this project and work on it. You have four other items to complete for this."

"I can't. It's all at home." GAH!!! Now he is giving me the pity me while I pretend to get tears. Meanwhile I am coming dangerously close to putting myself in a time out.

"I have no clue as to why it is all at home. We have talked about this in the past. We work on this every day. I have NEVER assigned this as homework. You need to figure out what you can work on for today. You have five minutes to be productive. At this point, if you feel you can't even estimate costs for the trip then you should find other work to do while the rest of us work on our projects." Okay- this is all happening very quietly. Dear is doing his best this isn't my fault impression. I walk away before I explode. I come back five minutes later and he has done NOTHING.

"What did you decide?"

He is now sniffling and whiny "I don't know! I can't do anything. My mom was looking stuff up for me and I can't do it! Everything is at home."

"I gave you some choices. You can do math, you can work on our reading. You WILL NOT sit here and feel sorry for yourself because YOU left your work at home. YOU need to step up to the plate and be responsible for your own learning. You can not honestly tell me that you have everything on this sheet done." I produce my copy of the project outline and point to the five things that will fulfill the requirements.

"But I don't have it here! I can't do it!" This is the point at which I am getting SO ANGRY that I consider sending him out of the room instead of putting myself in time out. I CAN NOT STAND that this kid expects that I am somehow supposed to feel sorry for him because he did something that he was NOT supposed to do. Let's not even get to the fact that he has admitted that his MOM is looking up information for him. THIS IS WHY PROJECTS DON'T GET DONE AT HOME!!!

"Dear, you are reaching the end of my patience. You figure out RIGHT NOW what you are going to do with the rest of the 50 minutes we have. If you are going to sit here and have a fit because of your own mistake, then take it outside in the hall. I'm not having any of it in my classroom. Either take some responsibility or take it outside. If you need to use the computer, as you mentioned before I asked everyone to work on their commercials, then you need to figure out what you need to research before I let you to the computer. Either way, time's a wastin' and I am short on patience." This has some effect. He blinks REALLY hard for the next three minutes and eventually starts to blink enough to create some very pitiful tears. GAH GAH GAH!! Someone shoot me now!

The short version of the rest of this is that when I start to go for the door to send him on his way, he comes to his senses and says that he needs to use the computer. I end up having to sit down with him and point him to the right site and explain how a place like Expedia works. Still, my goal for the rest of this year is simply to not kill this kid.