I have a son who is struggling in school. It’s not because he can’t do the work; he’s a very smart child and is classified as gifted. His struggles are because he is a teenager and he doesn’t want to do the work; he has a dislike for school. Outside of school, he is a wonderful child; kind, well-behaved, loving, and funny. His test scores are good but he continues to get zeroes on homework and in-class work. He always has a reason or a story behind these; it was lost, stolen, or the teacher simply didn’t grade it and the score is wrong. So, after a couple of these stories on a project last week, my wife went to his school yesterday and asked to go into his locker. The principal and a couple of his teachers accompanied her, and my son was called out of class to come to his locker. My wife said that the look on his face was as if he had seen a ghost; much of this incomplete work was stuffed into his locker along with a host of things that he has said was misplaced or stolen. She also had the opportunity to hear the stories that he was telling the teachers – how he didn’t have any help at home, couldn’t get onto a computer to do his work, left his books at school, and so forth. At the end of the visit, much had been accomplished and both teachers and parent had a much better understanding of what is happening.
Nevertheless, for my son, he has an integrity issue. He had stories going one way and lies and cover-ups going the other way. We are working on finding the root cause of these issues. But for us, he no longer has our trust. We will constantly be watching over his shoulder, visiting his school for these surprise locker checks, having excessive communication with his teachers, and he will suffer the consequences long from now because he has broken trust. We’re hurt and our relationship with him is strained. We love him, but we don’t like this part of him right now. If he doesn’t turn away from this type of behavior, it will control and dominate his life into adulthood.
Take this opportunity to investigate your life, not only at work but in your personal life. If there are any areas such as this, they ultimately will be discovered and will only bring pain into your life and into the life of others. Reveal those today and set yourself free from those burdens; it is always better to face up to the truth than to have it discovered. What would folks find if they could go through your locker?
