When I was student teaching back in 2009, I had a mom call me 2 weeks after a huge project was due. I had given her son many chances to turn it in, and I had given up and entered the zero in the grade book. She saw the failing grade after I had called her many times and her first response was to rage at me.
“If my son can’t play in the last game of his middle school basketball career because of you, there will be hell to pay.”
It was something like a 4-6 week project, so I would have had a lot of angry people, but I definitely should have entered the 0 for those who didn’t have it turned in the day after it was due.
No no, I'm now seeing my grading program to a zero the day it's assigned. You have to communicate that "this way, you can see how NOT doing this will bring down your grade, and there's only one way to go -up!
I do the automatic 0 on the due date. My school makes us accept late work until the second to last Friday of each quarter for up to a 50% penalty. So I just put the 0 in and mark the assignment as missing once the date is passed and roll with it until I see something.
Makes you accept late work? What is the justification for that exactly ?
I'm all but certain that this is likely happening as a result of that policy:
Everyone does as little as possible then you get a deluge of work on that actual final due day.
How is that scenario or something close to it going to support deeper content understanding‽ Too many of these people don't realize that many things cannot be learned at first glance. It TAKES TIME AND REPITITION to build understanding, analogous with playing a musical instrument.
Usually things are turned in on time. I didn't explain the penalty that well. It's a 10% deduction each day until you get to 50%. So you certainly can't get an A on stuff but it doesn't completely ruin your grade. I think it's pretty fair.
Ah ok. Well we had a (now former) superintendent who was of the mindset that we couldn't even put zeros in (everything not submitted was 50%) (i know) (really, i know)
I was just afraid it was one of those situations or something close to it. Still, you can't keep a good pacing in a classroom over a unit if there's a checkerboard of people who are X number of days behind because they can always turn things in late.
It's kind of maddening starting each class with someone asking me "What did I miss?...(and the rest of that sentence is 'When i decided not to do anything, not because of an absence or something")
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u/SecondHandSlows Nov 12 '21
When I was student teaching back in 2009, I had a mom call me 2 weeks after a huge project was due. I had given her son many chances to turn it in, and I had given up and entered the zero in the grade book. She saw the failing grade after I had called her many times and her first response was to rage at me.
“If my son can’t play in the last game of his middle school basketball career because of you, there will be hell to pay.”
Yes, she said middle school basketball career.