For the teachers

[sms001]

Awww, Snopes, why'd you have to ruin it?

In any case, this is pretty old, but it's making the rounds amongst the teachers on my FB feed. It's a school's "answering machine message."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=Pwghabw4N80

[PepperElf]

well to be honest i didn't think any school would actually put that as their answering machine. but it is funny.

[taxguykarl]

Right about that, PE, any school which dared would be sued out of existance.

[Chanlin]

It's fairly obvious even without snopes since the recording never identifies the school system you are supposedly calling. That's just like those scam calls from Card Services...


It is still funny and makes a great point though. When I was doing my student teaching rounds I had 3 students who were failing my class simply because they didn't do any work and had been absent for 25+ days each in the 75 that I had to be there.

At least one of them had a valid excuse I found out later, had some serious family issues at home. The other two I don't really know. One even went so far as to complain about being cut from the basketball team to which the coach responded "It would help if you actually came to school and to practice."

[fireheart]

It is still funny and makes a great point though. When I was doing my student teaching rounds I had 3 students who were failing my class simply because they didn't do any work and had been absent for 25+ days each in the 75 that I had to be there.

At least one of them had a valid excuse I found out later, had some serious family issues at home. The other two I don't really know. One even went so far as to complain about being cut from the basketball team to which the coach responded "It would help if you actually came to school and to practice."

I'm currently doing my student teacher rounds (first rounds were last year, I do the remaining time next year). I had two students in my class who were absent for frequent periods and had been marked as having attendance issues, while another student was sporadic, but had a reason for it. (She'd been commuting between the US and Australia and her family was moving back to the US permanently. Great kid though. )

Keep in mind these were Year 3/4 students, so around 8-10 years old.

Turns out that of the two with frequent attendance issues, one had somewhat neglectful parents (it was implied on a few occasions that her parents were alcoholics) at home, while the other was playing sick frequently and her mother believed it.

Unsurprisingly, both girls were struggling with the content.

[MoonCat]

That's pretty funny, and pretty realistic these days. I know a guy who taught 5th grade for years. Oh, the stories....His wife taught a remedial math class....in a state prison. There wasn't a whole lot of different between the maturity levels of the 5th grade kids and the inmates.

[Eevie]

Wow, working in the front office of my school, this is something we deal with on a daily basis. I can only imagine the screaming that would come from the idiot that tried to pull this same bullcrap.

[sms001]

It's fairly obvious even without snopes since

Well, that and the whole "Too good to be true" thing.

The Snopes line was really just to save the less cynical some time, and to give the background of the piece.

I have a [for fratching] attitude about attendance in college, but really can't believe there isn't a fairly standard sliding scale of punishments/penalties for it in grade and secondary school. Why make something mandatory if there aren't repercussions?