Reframing or taking a different look at a situation gives a lot of perspective. It lets you stop and analyze what is happening in your world, and decide what is going on not necessarily in your world but in the person with whom you have the problem. What brings this up? Late assignments. When I was in school it was never, NEVER, never an option to turn things in late. If you were going to turn it in late you better come in to talk to the teacher beforehand. Like well beforehand. Not in the 3 minutes before the class that it is due but in the days leading up to the due date. Two weeks ago I posted a list of 17 grade 10's that were missing one or more out of 4 assignments that were over the last 4 months, all of which I gave class time to work on and even in one case a week long extension to improve the copy that they turned in on the due date if they were not happy with the final outcome. I try to take the same approach as Howard Aldrich. He does not have a hard and fast rule when it comes to late assignments . If someone comes in and says they are going to turn in something late I generally start with "Ok", and then for seemingly no reason they proceed to give me some long drawn out story as to why it is late.... I just said "OK". I honestly do not care if you turn it in late or not. UNLESS .... You see when you turn something in late it does three things Piss me off, piss me off, and piss me off. Just kidding I just said I don't care. 1) It makes it harder for me to give a fair grade to you and to others if there is any subjectivity to the rubric, because lets face it I am kind of annoyed to be grading this thing after I have graded everyone else's. 2) It puts you at a disadvantage to your peers. You see that assignment you just submitted was tied to you actually learning something. Something that I took time to prepare for you. Or something that we have agreed is actually important for you to become a better person in the big wide universe. 3) It tells me that you don't care about your leaning, about yourself, and that you don't respect me and others in the class (keep in mind this is my personal view and may not be 100% accurate). You see, especially with something like these blogs we need them in on time to have something to do. For example our blog review classes are planned around the leadership students turning in one blog per term on a due date so that they can help elevate those in our class. So back to this whole reframing thing. I understand that we all have busy lives. Students these days have jobs, when I was in school you didn't have a real job. Students are hyper scheduled. Even my two year old has soccer on Tuesdays, and swimming (soon to be gymnastics) on Saturdays. What happened to the good old days of playing in the street? (Thats another blog). Then there is family(guy), Netflix, video games, and whatever else comes up. But what is a teacher to do? I love to remind people that in the business world if you miss a deadline you lose you job or a client. But as a teacher I am supposed to grade you based on the work you do not on wether or not you turn it in on time. So what should I do, give you a zero the day you miss your assignment? Wait 'till report card time and then zero out your chance for that term. Give you an incomplete on your report card and not pass you if you don't turn in a blog? Or just take it and smile? Or should I just reframe my expectations as a teacher? Should I just wait patiently and give out incomplete grades? Dealing with sad students, and angry parents because I was "not doing my job" as a teacher reminding every student, missing every assignment, every time I saw them?
1 Comment
Christina
12/5/2017 10:54:07 am
My dad was a math teacher and he was very unhappy when people turned in late work.
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
|