Note to teacher

Why, yes I DID just send this to all my eighth grade son's teachers. This is what happens when you trap me in a house with three sick kids:

Hello, teachers. 

 He fought the good fight, but unfortunately James just went down with the fever his little brother and sister have been trading back and forth all week. I threatened him with grounding if the fever didn't break, but it didn't work. In fact, it went up. Which is a darn shame because this is a kid that misses very little school primarily because it's so hard for him to dig out on missing assignments when he does. 

 *Loooooooonnnnnnnng sigh* 

 James probably really wishes he'd gotten a fever last night BEFORE he did all his homework, but it waited until this morning to pounce. Therefore, his homework is done. This leads me to a few questions: 

 1. Could I stop by the office today and turn his homework in for them to sort into your teacher boxes? Or do you prefer that he waits to turn it in when he gets back to school? 

 2. Please read this as me speaking with a totally non-critical tone: only one of you has current classwork/homework assignments posted on his/her website (you go, Mrs. Mathews!) (the rest of you: seriously, no judgment, I swear!), so is there any way to get today's classwork/homework assignments back as a quick email? I'll have him work on it today on the theory that some people say starve a fever, feed a cold and some people say feed a fever, starve a cold and I say just drown it with homework so it will decide to abandon its host on account of who wants to do homework? 

I taught 8th grade language arts for five years, and I realize I'm being THAT parent right now, but here's the thing: if his grade drops, I have to ground him from media. And he's already grounded from media because he has C's in PE and Consumer Science (yeah, he's that kid. If there's not a space for him to write it in his planner, it doesn't exist. Also, the mile=not his favorite). And grounding a kid from media is hard. Their entire conversation becomes negotiations about how to get the media back. "I'll plant a garden! I'll clean the baseboards with a toothbrush! I'll give you the key to unchain small brother from the backyard sapling if I can have twenty minutes with Minecraft!" 

 So really, helping James stay caught up is kind of a mental health thing for me, see? 

 Happy teaching today, guys.

 ~Melanie Jacobson 

Mother Under Siege