The Daily Grind - Lies

Now that the school year is really underway, the days have settled into the daily grind. The kids come to school, I teach things, we do activities together, I assign homework, I attempt to collect homework, I listen to lies about homework, etc.

What is it about kids in 6th grade that makes them, when they face the teacher and have to say "I didn't do my homework, Ms. Language Arts Lady," choose instead to lie?

And really, really bad lies, too.

Ones I have heard (just this week):

• "My mom threw it away." I hear this one constantly. And it is very rarely true. If it IS true, the child left it in an unfortunate place, and mom was just cleaning.
• "My mother went through my backpack and took it out." WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?? I ask, incredulously. I always get some variation of, I don't know, but she did. This has never been proven true, but I have heard it at least 20 times just this week.
• "I left it at home." Now, I do know that sometimes this one might be true, of course, but this one is the favorite phrase in every student, and used often as a lie covering what they should be saying, which is "I didn't do it." So I ask them: Why did you leave it at home? You knew you'd need it today... you wrote it in your planner, I reminded you as you left yesterday, you knew! Their response? "I don't know."
• "I left it in my other backpack." How many backpacks does one child need? I had one each year as a child, and that's it. If it would break, you would have to make do, or pull out last year's model and use that. Some of these kids seriously do have a backpack for every day of the week.
• "I was cleaning out my backpack and I left it on my bed." This little tale almost always includes the exact place they left it, as if telling me where it is currently will make me believe them. The way you can tell it's a lie? If you have ever seen the inside of a 6th grader's backpack, you know they NEVER clean them. It's amazing they don't get condemned and labeled toxic.

And many other crazy tales. This week I decided I was tired of the lies, so I started telling the students I knew they were lying to me, and they could stop.

It was actually a lot of fun, because the kids then felt bad they were lying (most of them) and told me the truth, and swore up and down they'd improve, etc.

Plus, if I have to listen, and look like I believe, that one more student's mom went through their backpack and threw away their homework, I was going to go mad.