In my many years of experience in education, I think I’ve heard it all – excuses from teachers, parents, and students. Excuses from parents and students begin with reasons for missed assignments, absenteeism, to physical education classes and extend to extra curricular activities.
As an educator when I would tell a parent that a child has been a behavior problem and needs disciplined, I could see them rear up in defense. They automatically ask about other children and consequences bestowed upon others for comparison. When behaviors are discussed with the child present, parents tend to turn to the child and ask if the accusation was true as if the teacher or principal was lying. This demeans educators and the relationship with parents.
Regardless of the situation, I have seen parents make excuses for all sorts of things. Parents go to the superintendent or school board before they understand the circumstances of a situation. Why not go through the teacher and principal first? Trust the process and trust the educators. Students need to understand and fix their own problems instead of having parents fix things for them.
Parents that think their children are anything less than perfect tend to make numerous excuses. They suggest that they don’t complete assignments or don’t pay attention in class because they are bored and therefore must be gifted. They even love to blame the teacher for ‘picking’ on children because the teacher isn’t stimulating enough to hold everyone’s interest.
Excuses range from ‘It’s not her fault she doesn’t have her homework done, we went shopping’, to ‘He must have ADD’. Making excuses only passes along a bad message to children. It tells them that they can have an excuse for almost anything they do or don’t do. Children are likely to misbehave if their parents feed them with a good excuse. It is my professional opinion as a parent and educator that there is no excuse to misbehave. Some excuses that make me roll my eyes are:
• The teacher constantly picks on him.
• I didn’t understand the assignment.
• I left my backpack in my dad’s car. (Although this can be true if the student goes to dad’s on weekends.)
• I had the window down on the bus and my homework blew away.
• My babysitter didn’t put it in my backpack.
• I have to miss practice because it’s my grandma’s birthday.
I absolutely love when parents hurriedly write an excuse:
• Please excuse Susie from Jim today.
• Please excuse Joe from school. It was his father’s fault.
• Please excuse Tom from class to use the bathroom as needed. His vowels are loose.
The best excuses are when the student writes their own, signs a parents name, then denies the obvious. I’ve even received excuses from physicians where parents and students have changed the dates to include a few extra days off.
Insist that children hold fast to their obligations and the commitments. The plain truth is – if you want children to succeed – stop making excuses.
Incomplete assignments, poor behavior, and classroom disruptions take the focus off the educational process and cheat the rest of the students of instructional time.
Students and parents aren’t the only people making excuses. Some teachers are in the same excuse boat. Some use the excuse that budgets were cut and they would be more effective if they had better materials. My favorite was that test scores were low because students didn’t work hard enough. Teachers even make excuses for not belonging or attending PTA meetings – stating that they work hard during the day and need to go home to correct papers. But, teacher excuses don’t come close to what is given by students and parents.
I would wholeheartedly agree that teachers are the hardest working people with one of the most difficult jobs. Yes, they are overworked with demanding expectations from both administrators and parents. They are under appreciated for their hard work and many parents would rather complain about a teacher’s methods than to sit, talk, and work with the school. Often teachers have large class sizes that put working with individual students at a disadvantage. They face standardized testing pressures, lack of funding, layoffs, and many other obstacles that arise during a single day. Having parents that make excuses for students only adds to the stress of providing them with the best education one can give.
If you are a parent, work with the school and trust your child’s teacher. If you are a teacher, have evidence to back up an allegation and help parents to understand that you have the best interest of their child in mind. After all, you are an educated professional in your field. Understand that most parents work very hard to teach children right from wrong but sometimes they undermine their own efforts through excuses.
