I've started a new homework policy this year. It's a multi-faceted policy, really, but the meat of it is that homework will be assigned every night and every student must do every assignment every night without fail.

I had a girl in after school today, and I was trying to ask her why she hasn't done any of her homework so far.

We worked on some things, and when it came time to go, she communicated in one way or another that she was too scared to walk home and too scared to call her mom for a ride.

It became evident pretty quickly that she has greater things on her mind than homework. Evaluating algebraic expressions all of a sudden looked pretty meaningless.