This week one of my kiddos was talking excessively during quiet work time, so she had to fill out a letter to her mom explaining what happened. She filled it out (and spun details the story to reduce impact at home) and took it home that night to get signed by her mom.
The next morning as she came in the classroom door, she told me a very off-topic comment about how her aunt (guardian) had never graduated from high school or college. I smiled and nodded and thought she was just telling me some random story until later, when I looked at the signature on the letter she had brought back. Not only did it only have her aunt's first name, it was written in very awkward, unpracticed cursive, and the first letter in her aunt's name were crossed out and re-written.
Obviously the child had written it herself, and she'd even gone as far as to plant a story about her aunt's never graduating, so that I might believe that that 4th-grade scrawl belonged to an adult. Needless to say, I made a call home and informed Auntie of what happened.
Moral of the story - If you are a 10 year old attempting to forge your parent or guardian's signature, remember this:
1. Adults write their first AND last names in their signatures. That's what a signature is...your WHOLE name.
2. Adults have written their signature so many times in their lives that they don't mess it up anymore, so we will know something is funny if a signature is partially erased or scratched out.
3. Before writing on the actual paper that needs a signature, it's better to practice on scratch paper until you get the signature completely right.
4. When you're not in very much trouble, it's best not to make the problem worse by being dishonest. Adults hate it when kids are sneaky, so you'll get in TONS of trouble for the sneakiness part, not the original thing you did.
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5 comments:
ha ha ha ha. That's awesome.
When I was in high school my parents taught me to forge their signatures not because I was bad so often but because I had so many permission slips from various programs that they got bored with signing them. But I still worked hard to make it look legit.
What you can do is, find something else they've signed and trace it very lightly onto the permission slip/letter home in pencil (very lightly so that if you mess up the erasing won't show) then erase enough so you can still barely see where the pencil was and go over it in a narrow-tipped felt pen. Worked perfectly for me.
Of course, this wasn't when I was a sneaky 10 year old, it was when I was a smart 16 year old.
Lol, I totally had 2nd graders who did the same thing with their homework assignments that had to be signed by their parents!
I should have added a number five:
5. And by the way, you're ten and you don't have the fine motor skills needed to make a good adult signature, so give it up and be honest.
number 6: If you have an older sibling who CAN forge the signature convincingly, suck up like there's no tomorrow.
So, do a lot of fourth graders read this blog?
One time when I was in 3rd grade I punched a kid who annoyed me, and then I said I didn't do it, and during recesses I had to write "two wrongs don't make a right" a lot. I'm not sure what lession I was supposed to learn.
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