Why “He’s Just Being Lazy” Irritates Me As A Teacher And Parent
I’m sliding a stack of Leo’s writing samples across the conference table last October, the room still smelling like the cheap pumpkin candle I grabbed from the dollar store that morning, when his mom leans forward and asks the question I’ve been dreading: “So, is he just being lazy with these assignments?” My chest tightens before I can stop it, that same old irrational irritation bubbling up. I know she doesn’t mean anything by it. She’s tired, she’s worried, she’s repeating a phrase she’s heard her whole life to describe uncompleted work. Still, I have to pause for a second before I answer, because all I can think about is the time my own 7th grader almost got labeled that same way, and how much harm three little words can do.
Leo was in my 4th grade class that year. His previous teacher had written “consistently unmotivated, prone to laziness” on his end-of-year report, and that label had stuck. During reading time, he’d slump in his chair, stare out the window at the oak tree across the street, and turn in blank responses 9 out of 10 times. During math, he’d “forget” his worksheet, or say he left it in his locker. A paraprofessional who helped in my room mentioned to me once that she’d tried to get him to work, and he just wouldn’t, so he was clearly just being lazy. I didn’t push back at first; I just started watching.
First I noticed he never got a school lunch, never pulled a snack out of his bag. He’d just sit on the recess bench and pick at the grass. I checked with the office, and found out his family’s free and reduced lunch application had gotten lost in a back-to-school paperwork backlog, and he was too embarrassed to tell anyone he couldn’t afford a $3 lunch. He was going four hours every day without food, and by 1 in the afternoon, he was too hungry to focus on anything. When I pulled him aside to ask about his reading responses, he mumbled that he couldn’t understand half the words on the page, and didn’t want anyone to know he was still reading like a second grader. He was 9, and he’d rather be called lazy than dumb.
I thought about that a month later, when Jax, my own middle schooler, brought home a stack of missing math assignments. I was washing dishes after dinner, and I almost opened my mouth to say “Quit being lazy and get your work done.” I caught myself at the last second, and instead I leaned against the counter and asked him what was going on. Ten minutes of gentle prodding later, he admitted he couldn’t open his combination lock. He’d had three different teachers show him, and he still couldn’t get it right in time before class started, and he didn’t want to stand there fumbling with it while everyone laughed. So he just left his math book in the locker every day and told me he’d put it in his backpack. He’d rather get a zero than be teased. If I’d said the lazy line out loud, I never would have gotten that story out of him.
The thing about the phrase “just being lazy” is that it’s a shortcut. It’s easy to slap a label on a kid who isn’t turning in work, instead of doing the slow, messy work of figuring out why they aren’t turning in work. When you call a kid lazy, you stop looking for the actual problem. The problem could be hunger, it could be embarrassment, it could be that the work is too hard, or too easy, or that they’re not sleeping because their parents are fighting, or that they’re being bullied, or that they have an undiagnosed learning issue that no one’s caught yet. None of those are laziness. They’re just problems that need solving.
I’ve started swapping the lazy question for a different routine with parents and other teachers who ask me about struggling kids. Instead of asking “is this kid lazy?”, ask three specific questions, one after another: First, “Is this work harder for them than they’re letting on?” Second, “Is something outside of school or in class making this harder to do right now?” Third, “What small thing can we change to make this easier?” If you’re a teacher, pull the kid aside for two minutes after class, don’t ask in front of their friends. Most kids won’t admit they’re hungry, or can’t read, or can’t open a lock in front of a room full of peers. If you’re a parent, sit down next to them at the kitchen table, open their assignment notebook, and say “Show me the part that’s bugging you” instead of standing over them asking why it’s not done. It’s a tiny shift, but it changes everything.
Leo still forgets his folder sometimes. He still has days where he doesn’t want to do the work, and he slumps in his chair and stares out the window. But we got his lunch sorted, we got him extra reading help during homeroom, and last month he turned in a three-page story about his rescue beagle that he wrote all on his own. He got a B+, and he carried it around with him all day. Jax still forgets his homework once in a while, but now he texts me before I leave work to bring his book to school, instead of just taking a zero.
I still hear that phrase all the time – at PTA meetings, at parent teacher conferences, even in the checkout line at the grocery store when one parent is talking about another person’s kid. I still get that same old irrational irritation every time, even when I know the person saying it doesn’t mean any harm. I don’t yell, I don’t lecture. I just ask them the question I’ve started asking: What do you think is actually making this hard for them? More often than not, it quiets the conversation, and makes people think. It doesn’t fix every problem, and some days kids still don’t turn in their work no matter what we do. But no kid is ever just lazy. That’s the one thing I know for sure.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why “He’s Just Being Lazy” Irritates Me As A Teacher And Parent