One out of four

Perhaps it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I seem to have more students failing my class this year than ever before.  Of course, I've had students fail before, but it's always just a few here and there.  There seems to be quite a bit more this time though, including several of my seniors.  (Uusally by the time they get to senior year, they're a bit more on the ball and turning in their work.)

I've heard of other teachers having these numbers of Fs before.  Shoot, I remember back when I TA'd for a Government class when I was a sophomore in high school, the teacher gave me a huge stack of postcards that had to be mailed out.  Each one was going to the parents of students who were failing the class and unlikely to graduate.

I've written before about this sort of a thing, and I can tell you that everybody who's failing is doing so because he or she is not turning in the work.  It's really that simple.  But why don't they have it together enough to turn in the work?  Am I doing something wrong?

Well, in the past couple of weeks, I have had four meetings scheduled with parents of individual students.  (These involved all of their teachers - not just me.)  Out of those four meetings, three were canceled because the parents didn't show up.

I guess that tells you something, at least.