Any teacher, parent or student is familiar with excuses for neglected homework. Each student is an individual and you can bet they have their own unique excuses. Sometimes we wish that students would use their creativity and ingenuity to complete their assignments, and other times, the excuse cannot be classified as anything other than a dud.
“I lost my homework.”
“I did the wrong assignment.”
“I didn’t have the right book, paper, etc. to finish the assignment.”
“My computer crashed and my report wasn’t saved.”
When a student comes forward with such excuses they honestly believe it is a worthy explanation. Though a teacher has heard those words several times, they think that when they utter them it will help the situation and they are an exception.
“I left my homework on the roof of the car and it blew away.”
“My mom threw it away when she was cleaning off the kitchen table.”
“My baby brother/ sister got a hold of it and destroyed it.”
While these excuses are a bit more creative, they are still lame. They are the result of carelessness. If the student had done their homework and returned it to a safe place, the situation could have been avoided.
Then there are the infamous “I didn’t have time because…” excuses.
Use your imagination to insert whatever time-consuming event you can think of. Grandma’s birthday, church, grocery shopping, going out to dinner, a sporting event and countless other events have been used.
Every once and a while a student does come up with a real gem of an excuse, and the teacher will be wishing for a more typical explanation. One student came to school with their partially finished homework in a Ziploc bag. After handing it to the teacher, she explained that her sister had taken it, put it in the toilet and peed on it. Her mom had fished it out and made her take it to school as proof.
One cannot mention excuses without mentioning pet excuses. A teacher might believe that the pets of the world have a private vendetta against homework. Perhaps homework cuts into their play time. For whatever reason, dogs, gerbils, goats and an assortment of animals have been eating homework since the beginning of homework’s existence. If they are not eating it, they are throwing up, pooping or peeing on it.
Every teacher should be prepared for lame excuses whether they have heard them a million times or they are new and creative. Excuses come with the territory when assigning children to do something they don’t want to do.