Ivyboy is a very bright kid. He’s imaginative, polite, and can carry on an intelligent conversation with adults without a bunch of “Dudes” and “Like, ya knows?” He is not perfect, however (that honor belongs to FairyChatMom’s daughter ;)) and he has screwed up, one semester last year quite royally, to the point that the Report Card Fairy took a big chomp out of his butt.
One thing however, he is honest. Now, I know you don’t know me from Adam, but we know our son. He does not lie, he does not cheat. His bad talents lie in other areas, such as laziness and disorganization and a tendency to peak on his schoolwork.
He got a test back last week and the teacher had marked him wrong on a question he’d answered correctly. Ivyboy brought it to the teacher’s attention.
The teacher said that my son had circled the answer on top of the teacher’s circle, that he’d originally not answered the question at all, and accused my son of cheating and said he was turning him into the judicial committee. This is a group made up of teachers and students that review honor code violations.
My son was understandably upset at having his honor impugned, and proceeded to vent to his friends over the next week. This is a small school, and word got back to the dean that my son was talking about this with his friends, and she told him to stop, that it was looking like a case of “Methinks he doth protest too much.”
Ivylad and I knew about this (Ivyboy told us the day it happened) and were trying to give him guidance in dealing with this while not fighting his battle for him. He had a letter from a character reference and was as prepared as he could be.
The judiciary was today, and they found that he cheated, and because he would not admit that he cheated, that he also lied. He appealed to the dean and the headmaster, and the dean said that she had examined the test under a magnifying glass and found that his mark was definitely over the teacher’s mark, and the headmaster said that he was sticking to his story because he didn’t want to get in trouble with us.
At this point, I’m afraid, Ivyboy lost it. He became quite upset and threw his elbow into the wall of the headmaster’s. We’ve raised our son that one’s word and reputation is very important and I think it’s sunk in, because when confronted with a wrongdoing, Ivyboy fesses up immediately. He was sent to judiciary a couple of years ago, for lying to a teacher, and he admitted freely that he had done so.
The dean called me and asked me to come get him, as he was very upset and quite confrontational. I was on my way to work and we live five minutes from the school, so Ivylad went in my stead. The headmaster was a bit on the condescending side, and when Ivylad pointed out another question on the test, which Ivyboy had gotten wrong, which showed his ink had bled through the teacher’s marking of the correct answer, he blew it off.
Bottom line, Ivyboy apologized for losing his temper and he remained at school. I was hoping it would be a couple more years before he had to learn this particular lesson, but hopefully he will use this to fire up his schoolwork and get As for the remainder of the year.
And for me, I’m a little heartbroken that my child has been hurt and I can’t fix it. Kissing a boo-boo won’t work anymore, I’m afraid.