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This year for the first time I had a nine year old say to me that they were too busy to do their homework as his eyes watered up right at the rim. Wonderful child and great parents , too, though I think they are overwhelmed like most between figuring out the life/work balance and navigating societal issues to overachieve. He wasn't the only little one with the same issue. My teaching partner and I gave very simple homework as we both have strong feelings about homework and benefits/disadvantages. My post may be an oversimplification of a very complicated problem. Many families also have life/work issues that  prevent homework from being done that include language, culture , life style, etc. I could use that giggle but those excuses many times were a red flag  that I needed to be a better communicator with the parents or there was really nothing I could do.

My favorite excuse for no homework has got to be: "I wasn't able to do my homework last night because we had to go to the Grand Opening of the Bass Pro Shop." Four students gave me this same excuse ... you've got to love it!

I had worked sooo hard trying to get my kids to understand the "new math" that the parents did not.  I worked for a week on one lesson to make sure they understood.  When I finally gave some homework on it, I have a couple of kids not turn it in.  When I called up one student in particular, he told me he couldn't do his homework because his mom and dad didn't understand how to do it.  Mind you he did...he just figured since they didn't...he didn't have to.  LOL.

A parent warned a fellow teacher that the cat relieved itself on the child's homework and sent it in a sealed zipper bag as proof.

"My homework is on this disc (USB, zip drive, fill in the newest storage device), and I can't print it out." This is the new "the dog ate my homework." My answer, "What a bummer," and I keep on with what I was doing.

The homework was to create a certain figure with paper tangrams, glue it down and return it in the morning. The next day a child sheepishly tells me he can't turn in his work and hands me two pieces of lined paper glued together. I was stumped and then he begins to explain he had a slight problem with the glue. When the glued pieces of paper were held up to the light, the tangrams were glued inside. I never laughed so hard in my life. That was 15 years ago and I still have it to this day.

I had a parent write a note that their dog REALLY ate the homework...

The paper had teeth marks on it and it was still wet when the child turned it in!

High School freshman: "I don't have a paper to turn in today.  Actually, I got it all done and it was great and I saved it to the hard drive, but then my Dad took our laptop to Washington D.C. with him and so that's where my paper is. 

(I suggested Dad email the paper to me in an enclosure and she said that there was no way to contact her father because he was on secret governemnt business and unavailable.)

College student:  "I don't understand why you didn't get my paper.  I sent it to your email address last night.  (That evening I was checking my email when the paper arrived - it showed it was sent at 6:10 p.m. that night.  When I told the student that she said that must be a mistake because she sent it at 6:10 a.m. "There is probably something wrong with your computer's clock," she suggested.

This is not an excuse for a student to pass HW in, but a reason why I could not pass it back.  I was grading some projects for a math class, and I had the posters and papers spread out on the floor.  I left to get a drink and when I came back my cat was laying all over the posters and had shredded one of the papers that went with the poster on top.  I gave the student a grade for the poster and said my cat ate his HW so I could not grade it.  He printed out another copy for me to grade.  There were no hard feelings, but it took a while for his class to let me live it down.  

I kept getting HW from a kid that always had holes in it. It looked like as though someone would take a pencil and just keep stabbing the papers. The poor kid brought his Holiday HW packet back to school from winter break in a ziploc bag  with a not attached to it. As I took it out of the bag, it looked like it had been bitten by a shark with a huge chunk taken out of it. The note read: Dear Ms. K- please excuse the appearance of Shawn's HW packet. We have adopted a family of parakeets and they seem to love paper. They have been attacking the HW of all our children. Thank you for accepting his holy HW. I was cracking up. To top it off, as Shawn was taking off his sweatshirt to hang in the locker, blue and yellow feathers flew out of the shirt above his head and floated to the ground. P.S. I kept the note and the HW packet in the ziploc bag for about 10 years! Too funny!

The most interesting excuse I received for not turning in homework was that my student's cat scratched his homework to pieces.

The best one I ever heard was "I was holding my guinea pig and it died right in my hands last night.  Seriously.  I felt its little heart stop beating."  Cue the violins.  I would have been much more sympathetic if the homework had not been assigned three weeks ago and she had chosen to do it the night before it was due.  I talked to her father, and in his own words, "The guinea pig should have had a 24-hour mourning period.  Now it's over."

"I did my homework at work.  And we are not supposed to do that on our work computers, so I saved it to a flash drive.  Then I left my flash drive in my desk at work and somebody stole it."

I had a third grade student whose mother consistently did her homework for her.  Well, one morning this little girl didn't have her homework in and so I asked her why.  She said that she didn't have her homework because her 'mom didn't have time to finish it last night'.  I was very annoyed at the time...but now it's kind of funny. 

I had a third grade student who told me his dog had puppies on his homework and he couldn't bring it in. The principal went for a home visit and sure enough the dog had puppies on his bed and on top of his homework. Needless to say I didn't ask him to bring it in.

When I did my student teaching at a Junior High School in NEw York City's Hell's Kirtchen, a studnet told my cooperating teacher that an elephan had died on his notebook and he could not do his homework because he did not know what it was.  the teacher went "ballistic".  This young man had consistantly not done his homework the whole year. The student was promptly sent to the dean who also was incredulous that He was then pushed up higher on the chain of command until he reached the principal's door.  She also carried on about her disappoointment at him and questioning why he would make up such a fantastic tale.

The boy then pointed to the copy of the New York Daily News which was sitting on the principal's desk.  There on page three was the story of how the Ringling Brother's Circu can into town the night before with a full parade theogu the Lincoln Tunnel ( a few short blocks form the school) and how one of the elderly elephants, obviouslyt overcome by latent fumes in the tunnel, had collapesed in the street enroute to Madison Square Garden.

Our young student was in the street following the parade, behind the elephants when this hulk of a animal buclked at the knees and rolled over towards him.  He ran to the curb leaving behind his bag of books which were flattened and made impossible to retrieve by the rather large elephan carcass on top.

I would often tell this tale to my classes on the first day of school indicating that any excuse they could make up had to top that one.  None ever did.

This first grade boy told me his mother told him not to do his HW. The sad thing is that since the number of students that don't do their HW every year increases no matter how many discussions I have with the parents-that the boy very well may have been telling the truth (although he did have a history of lying to me.)

I try to train students to "put it in writing."   It being their notes, complaints, suggestions, and so on.  One evening I assigned HW reading pages and a follow-up activity aloud.  I faltered since I didn't copy the assignment onto the white board.  The next day a student told me in all his self-righteous glory, "Hey Big Redd, since you didn't 'put it in writing' it doesn't count."  We all smiled.

"I didn't have a pencil."

The best homework excuse was not one I received but one I had to write when my oldest son was in high school. My youngest child was just learning to pull himself up on things. My son left his homework sitting on the couch. Thus the excuse, "My baby brother ate my homework" was born.