Failing Students

I teach Englishes I and IV.  English IV, almost universally, is an everyday pleasure.  Unless something catastrophic happens on the exam tomorrow, none of my seniors will fail this first nine weeks.

That bears repeating.

NONE of my seniors will fail.  I need to take a moment to laud them.  Being a part of their school, everyday I see how all the other students act, I see the expectations (or lack thereof) put on them by their peers and their educators, and I see how they push all this crap aside and for the most part act like responsible adults.  They run this school, and they run it well.  Just today, after lunch, one of my freshmen was late getting back (we are supposed to constantly monitor our kids before, during, and after lunch, but this girl was intent on not following the rules, so I left her in the cafeteria), and I gave her a writing assignment (the rule being: if i beat you to class, you get a writing assignment).  As she took the assignment from me, she grabbed it and crumpled it up.  At least two of the seniors who were in my class at the time said, "K, you know better than to behave like that" (or words to the same effect).

My freshmen, on the other hand, are zoo animals. Up to 30 or 35 percent should be failing, but due to a reward policy that mitigates their failure to turn in homework, many of them are doing drastically better than they should.  With some noted exceptions, the freshmen are:
lazy
childish
irresponsible
crude
obscene
irresponsible

My freshmen have not realized that this is not middle or grade school (or, for that matter, a house party).  The basic levels of self-motivation and continence (both emotional and ESPECIALLY physical) required by an academically rigorous course are totally foreign concepts to them.
Besides the usual sophomoric abuses (or am I giving them too much credit?), I have seen students go missing for a week and then show up, not only without asking about the assignments they've missed, but not even caring if they've received zeros or not.  Heaven only knows if the parents are even cognizant of their own children's extended absences.  And concerning these "problem kids," their parents talk a big game but consistently fail to deliver.

The parents that will pick up a phone, on the other hand, and especially those parents who have their own phone and aren't bumming off a neighbor's line, have the best children, far and away.  Which sounds obvious, and is so.