excuses of a poet

Poetry assignment requires the child write 10 peoms. This is classwork done over a period of time. By the end of the quarter, my 5th grader submitted 4 peoms. Teacher is disappointed and asks why this happened, to which he just shrugs. So, the teacher sends me an email and I ask my son why he did not respond to the teacher.
He just shrugs. By then I am frustrated also trying to delve into the root of the problem.
I then say to him "you should have some excuse.. you ran out of time or.. a writer's block..."
He: "yeah, I ran out of time, ok?"
Me:"Understood! if you gave me that excuse after doing 9 or 9.5 poems, great! not with just 4!"
He: Mmm. how about a "poet's block?" Will you accept that?
I gave up! go figure!

On Authoring

A friend recently suggested that I should read Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. My brain OD'd on Bengali authors, discarded the suggestion.. Got home to start yet another bengla writer converstation.. But curiosity got the better of me and I did go out and read a book of CBD in one sitting..
But wait a min, this is a parenting blog.. so what's the deal?
Well.. my younger son happened to see the book (Sister of my heart) on the table and he said he knew what the book was all about. The book had a small pic of two indian women on the cover.
He went on fabricating a story -eerily close to the orignial globally speaking - but then asked permission to inject some unrealistic fiction into the story (Thanks to schools for the nomenclature) and the story took on a familiar tone of alchemists and monsters.
There may be some hope for Tamilian (Am-Tam) authors in English -in the near future:)

Reading and writing

Back from a long break. After a tough class, I almost swore off of reading and writing. But old habits die hard. I've written on many topics just in my head, now that I sit down to blog, I have memory loss. Guess I didn't put it on autosave ;)
Anyhow.. school's winding down here. Summer reading begins. We always diligently sign up at the local library for summer reading, but so far have never filled out the log -obviously nothing to turn in. Why not? you ask..
My kids have never willingly written anything. They love to read and I've been able to discuss with them some of the few I've also read, but when asked to write, it will somehow get set aside. At school, most assignments have a scoring rubric. The older one follows it to the T! "It only says two sentences, you know! no extra points for an extra sentence!".
My lecture that a rubric is a helpful tool to help cover all important aspects of the topic is met with a silence from the sofa - the kids have long disappeared at the beginning of my sentence!
So, I gave up. My excuse, writing is to put down original thoughts on a subject. Children do not have enough experience to draw from their frame of reference to write about a book. They may enjoy the work, but do not have much to say about it.
Plus today's writing in a business world is all powerpoint using bulleted entries anyway..
Sour grapes?