7th grade student at Mesa High School. In her English class, a lengthy research paper has been assigned requiring research through digital sources. The teacher gave multiple class periods for research. The school library was also available to them. The assignment was due a week out. The day before it was due, the teacher stated that whatever wasn’t finished in class needed to be finished for homework. Knowing there were a few students that didn’t have access to digital resources at home, the teacher suggests that students can use the school or public libraries if needed. Cindy’s mother works late and Cindy has to babysit her siblings after school, so she can’t stay after school and work in the school library. This also means Cindy has no way to get to the public library. Cindy comes back the next day with no paper. What would you do as the teacher in this situation? And what is the best way for this teacher to handle this situation and equitably assess Cindy? I would have Cindy still turn her work in on time. She had a week to get somewhere with her paper and came with nothing. She was given plenty of opportunity at school and in class to get her work done. Work was optional at home and she also could have downloaded the articles and worked offline or she could have asked to have them printed off.
I do agree with you mainly because they are high school students. Had they been younger, I would have had more sympathy. During my my lesson, I would make it clear to all of the students that if they did not have access to computers outside of school for one reason or another, to please let me know so that we could work together to create a plan. Those who failed to ask/reach out for help, would of course receive incomplete grades because of what you mentioned (they had one week). In high school, you are supposed to become more independent and one of the lessons that is of course taking responsibility. I enjoyed reading your response.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nushin as well. Because she is an older student, she should have been able to manage her time in class in order to get at least some part of her paper done. If I had seen some effort to get the paper done, I would have some sympathy for her and extended it a couple more days. But because she came with nothing, and there was no effort, she would receive a zero.
ReplyDeleteI think this is pretty sound logic. The fact that the teacher had given them time in class that could have been used productively to complete the assignment with time to spare seems obvious. The student would probably feel sad after receiving that bad grade though and I think a good step to take would be to take a seat with the student one day and discuss her taking accountability for the time that she spends and asking her if there was anything the teacher could do to create a space where she could focus to the best of her abilities.
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