I have a student who’s bored with my class. In his defense, he’s the only student in the class.

I written before about how I’m apparently too good at scaring students away from high school third year classes and how I ended up with only one student in my class and what problems that was going to cause.

Unfortunately, the predicted problems have already come true and it’s only the fourth class. It doesn’t help that the student isn’t doing his homework. Basically, the deal I offered was that I would provide material for the first hour and, if there was a writing assignment, the second hour. (Note: the classes meet once a week for two hours.) His job was to bring something to do for the second. It could be a conversation topic or an article, but he had to bring something.

I kept up my part, but he’s been slacking on his. Last week I kept him busy most of the second hour and then he wanted to talk about Los Angeles because he wants to move there. (He doesn’t seem to know it’s built on an earthquake fault line and run by morons.) This week he just stared at me as if he was surprised I expected him to do something. I reminded him he was supposed to bring something to do or talk about and he gave me the teenager shrug.

I cut his points 50%. I’ll give him one more chance to do his homework and then I’ll start giving him work to do: Essays about his favorite actors. Essays about his favorite movies. Homework to research different acting schools and write about them. Or my personal favorite: Essays about why it’s more fun to bring things you want to do than write about why you didn’t bring something to do.

I suspect once the class finds its feet and I figure out how to teach it to only one student he’ll be fine. Until then, he’d better have a pen and some paper.