Dubious Distinction

It's Award Season in the world of Elementary School!  However, the mother of an eight-year-old Arizona girl who was presented with a "Catastrophe Award" for apparently having the most excuses for not having homework believes her child was humiliated by her teacher. "I think it's cruel and no child should be given an award like this. It's disturbing," she said, adding that she was not aware her daughter had a problem with homework, and that the girl had been enrolled in an after-school homework assistance program.
Wait a second. Back up the tape. Did she say that her daughter had been enrolled in an after-school homework assistance program and she was unaware that her daughter had a problem with homework? That's a little confusing, isn't it? I'm not going to side with the teacher on this one, since an eight-year-old probably isn't going to get the layers of sarcasm that are involved in presenting such an award. He or she might get the humiliation part, which is a vein that had been mined each time that student had appeared in the morning without homework. I can relate to this, since my son has been struggling with a similar experience this past year as a freshman in high school.
He didn't got through that one alone, however. His mother and I have doubled our efforts to find the holes in his filing system and poked through his backpack on an increasingly regular basis, looking for those stray assignments or missing worksheets. Initially we cursed his teachers for not giving him the attention he deserved, and then became aware that the gap in the fence was the locus of control. He had made it all the way to fourteen without fully understanding that homework was his job, and that his teachers and parents were there to help and facilitate, but turning in papers and projects was his responsibility. Not ours. But if he brought home a Catastrophe Award for his efforts this year, I would share it with him. It's my job to get him ready for the work he's got in front of him and to get it where it belongs. I guess I would thank a third grade teacher who gave me the heads-up just so we could have had a jump on what was ahead of us. For him.