My bad

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've said to the boys I tutor, "Slow down!"  I correct their workbooks, making sure they've found all their mistakes and correct them before I go over it again.  A perfect PACE has been rare this year.  It disappoints me to see many mistakes, but when a boy gets almost done with the whole workbook and there is a mistake, I am really disappointed.  Because it's at the end of the book and because it's usually something silly like a misspelled word, or a missed capitalization, I am disappointed that I can't encourage him with a huge smiley face and he'll get no merits for the merits store.

Unfortunately, when their are many mistakes, it's usually misspelled words, lack of punctuation, or missed capitalization.  The answer may be correct, but if he's misspelled it in English, Word Building or Math, I have to mark it wrong.  Many of the misspelled words are no more than leaving the "e" off before or "ed" off a verb.  Carelessness.  In a hurry.  They're at an age when they aren't interested in doing their best, just in getting it done.

And, what do I do?  Yesterday's blog said the parable of the soils was in Matthew.  Wrong!  Sorry about that.  My bad.  I realized my mistake this morning when I went to quote that passage in my Bible study and couldn't find it in Matthew.  So sorry about that.  The boys aren't the only ones who need to slow down!