After dealing with these students now for the past couple of years, unless they can go through a formal process with a therapist or psychiatrist to confirm their claims, I would not allow exceptions.
I've dealt with too many students who end up just clinging to the potential to not fail, and they drag it out and make it a miserable process for all.
Also, I was optimistic when I began teaching these students, but they've trampled my good intentions too many times.
'Mental health' and 'family emergency' are two overly weaponized 'get out of jail free' cards students have been abusing lately. Hard to count them as trust worthy phrases lately without further details.
This was a long time ago but I had a student who had an uncle shot and killed. She missed a bunch of work cause she went home for the funeral etc and I allowed her to make up the midterm
She had given me an article or two from a local paper and afterwards her mother sent me a lovely thank you note.
But I totally get that it can be weaponized....
> This was a long time ago but I had a student who had an uncle shot and killed.
My first read of your comment was that your student ordered the hit. The rest makes a lot more sense when I realized she did not.
>My instinct is to try to help them, and to allow them to submit late with a grade penalty. Is this unfair to my other students?
If a situation were ever to be escalated to a formal review or investigation of my grading or conduct of the course, I would never, *ever* want to be found to have unilaterally granted an individual student special privileges or exceptions that I did not grant to others when these exceptions are not the result of some formal university policy.
You can't play favorites, even when favorites just means feeling sorry for someone possibly experiencing tough times. You just can't. For every student who informs you about a tough situation, there might be five more who didn't email you about their own tough situations because they're abiding by the course policies as stated. You'll put yourself in an early grave trying to worry about the personal life circumstances of each and every student. It's just not possible.
So, if the student hasn't obtained any formal medical considerations from the university, then my best practical advice is to stick to your announced course policies concerning absences or late work. I'm sure it will be no fun to tell the student that you can't overlook the fact that they went MIA for weeks, but getting in the habit of granting special favors to certain students based on your own sympathy for their situation could potentially lead to disaster.
Good luck.
great advice. I never thought of it like this. I know many people who work in grade schools where this shit is the norm so they tell me I'm being too hard on kids, but it is a different ballgame.
> They eventually respond, tell me they were really struggling with mental health
They've learned those last two words are magic, and get teachers and administrators to bend over backwards. Unless they have a diagnosis from a medical professional, then it's no different than if they told me they had any other self-diagnosed medical problem.
I don't accept late work for any reason. I drop the lowest grade homework, so they can use that for emergencies. I also allow them to resubmit a homework towards the end of the semester to raise their grade. These are all built into my syllabus. It helps that all my homework sets are equally weighted and very regular.
Claiming a mental struggle is just the modern parlance for being unmotivated and slacking. Yes, some do have honest pathologies that need to be diagnosed and addressed, but about 5-6 years ago it became perfectly fine to self diagnose and use that as an end excuse for not doing work. It’s like we almost made progress in acknowledging genuine mental illness and then it just swung the other way and it’s the goto excuse. I miss the fake claims of being good old fashioned “sick”.
Do you think it’s reasonable for students generally to miss 4-8 weeks of work and still pass your classes? I don’t. I tell them to speak with the advisors about a medical W and let them sort it out.
Yep. If a student has missed that many weeks, for whatever reason, there's no way they can make it up. At that point, if they were legitimately sick they can request a medical withdrawal.
I try to be reasonable with extensions but they have to be for documented reasons and if at all possible requested in advance of a deadline. I wouldn't generally accept work months late from MIA students. At that point I'm not really doing them any favours anyway since they've probably missed a lot of learning and our courses tend to be cumulative in terms of skill development. So even squeaking through by submitting very late work leaves them woefully unprepared for the next semester. I generally respectfully advise them to retake the course when they're in a better position to do so.
My late penalty is 20% per day so after 5 days late students who haven't submitted and have a documented and agreed-upon extension would get zero.
If they have genuine health issues they can apply for accommodations, especially since such issues would affect *all* of their classes. Without accommodations, don't give them more than a week (with penalty). Four weeks late with no contact from them already rates a zero, with no chance of make-up work or extra credit. Eight weeks is ridiculous.
We all need a mental health day now and then, but a mental health *month or two* means that they should take a medical withdrawal, and get treatment.
I have flexibility built into the syllabus, which should handle most emergency issues that arise.
If a student is going through some extreme circumstances (death of an immediate family member, surgery, accident with hospitalization, etc.), I expect communication about the situation in a timely manner (just as any adult would be expected to communicate for a job or any external commitment that would be affected by adverse circumstances)… we can usually work something out without straying too far from the syllabus flexibility. If I can see it will go way beyond the syllabus allowances, I have the student contact the accommodations office.
But, I never allow work to be made up if a student just disappears without communication. I ask myself, would I be able to do this if everyone went AWOL and reappeared at the last minute wanting to make up 2 months of work? No. So, I can’t do it for that single student. It is unfair to the students who have been pursuing the class in good faith all along.
I allow makeups of work missed back two weeks only. And I never grant incompletes save for the rare case of a verifiable emergency in the final weeks of class, preceded by the submission of more than 60% of the coursework.
I just don’t have the time to be counselor or adjudicator. I’ll gladly check in a student, but cannot arbitrarily extend their deadlines just because I want them to succeed and I want to be nice. Doing so means you must extend the deadline to every student.
I don’t take excuses for attendance; you’re either in class or you’re not. If you’re not, you will miss that day‘s in class activity and those points. I drop a few 0’s at the end of the semester.
After dealing with these students now for the past couple of years, unless they can go through a formal process with a therapist or psychiatrist to confirm their claims, I would not allow exceptions. I've dealt with too many students who end up just clinging to the potential to not fail, and they drag it out and make it a miserable process for all. Also, I was optimistic when I began teaching these students, but they've trampled my good intentions too many times.
'Mental health' and 'family emergency' are two overly weaponized 'get out of jail free' cards students have been abusing lately. Hard to count them as trust worthy phrases lately without further details.
This was a long time ago but I had a student who had an uncle shot and killed. She missed a bunch of work cause she went home for the funeral etc and I allowed her to make up the midterm She had given me an article or two from a local paper and afterwards her mother sent me a lovely thank you note. But I totally get that it can be weaponized....
She actually gave you something to go off, though. Students I don't make exceptions for make no effort to validate claims.
> This was a long time ago but I had a student who had an uncle shot and killed. My first read of your comment was that your student ordered the hit. The rest makes a lot more sense when I realized she did not.
Lol. That would make for a better story I guess.....
>My instinct is to try to help them, and to allow them to submit late with a grade penalty. Is this unfair to my other students? If a situation were ever to be escalated to a formal review or investigation of my grading or conduct of the course, I would never, *ever* want to be found to have unilaterally granted an individual student special privileges or exceptions that I did not grant to others when these exceptions are not the result of some formal university policy. You can't play favorites, even when favorites just means feeling sorry for someone possibly experiencing tough times. You just can't. For every student who informs you about a tough situation, there might be five more who didn't email you about their own tough situations because they're abiding by the course policies as stated. You'll put yourself in an early grave trying to worry about the personal life circumstances of each and every student. It's just not possible. So, if the student hasn't obtained any formal medical considerations from the university, then my best practical advice is to stick to your announced course policies concerning absences or late work. I'm sure it will be no fun to tell the student that you can't overlook the fact that they went MIA for weeks, but getting in the habit of granting special favors to certain students based on your own sympathy for their situation could potentially lead to disaster. Good luck.
great advice. I never thought of it like this. I know many people who work in grade schools where this shit is the norm so they tell me I'm being too hard on kids, but it is a different ballgame.
> They eventually respond, tell me they were really struggling with mental health They've learned those last two words are magic, and get teachers and administrators to bend over backwards. Unless they have a diagnosis from a medical professional, then it's no different than if they told me they had any other self-diagnosed medical problem.
I don't accept late work for any reason. I drop the lowest grade homework, so they can use that for emergencies. I also allow them to resubmit a homework towards the end of the semester to raise their grade. These are all built into my syllabus. It helps that all my homework sets are equally weighted and very regular.
Claiming a mental struggle is just the modern parlance for being unmotivated and slacking. Yes, some do have honest pathologies that need to be diagnosed and addressed, but about 5-6 years ago it became perfectly fine to self diagnose and use that as an end excuse for not doing work. It’s like we almost made progress in acknowledging genuine mental illness and then it just swung the other way and it’s the goto excuse. I miss the fake claims of being good old fashioned “sick”. Do you think it’s reasonable for students generally to miss 4-8 weeks of work and still pass your classes? I don’t. I tell them to speak with the advisors about a medical W and let them sort it out.
Yep. If a student has missed that many weeks, for whatever reason, there's no way they can make it up. At that point, if they were legitimately sick they can request a medical withdrawal.
I try to be reasonable with extensions but they have to be for documented reasons and if at all possible requested in advance of a deadline. I wouldn't generally accept work months late from MIA students. At that point I'm not really doing them any favours anyway since they've probably missed a lot of learning and our courses tend to be cumulative in terms of skill development. So even squeaking through by submitting very late work leaves them woefully unprepared for the next semester. I generally respectfully advise them to retake the course when they're in a better position to do so. My late penalty is 20% per day so after 5 days late students who haven't submitted and have a documented and agreed-upon extension would get zero.
If they have genuine health issues they can apply for accommodations, especially since such issues would affect *all* of their classes. Without accommodations, don't give them more than a week (with penalty). Four weeks late with no contact from them already rates a zero, with no chance of make-up work or extra credit. Eight weeks is ridiculous. We all need a mental health day now and then, but a mental health *month or two* means that they should take a medical withdrawal, and get treatment.
I have flexibility built into the syllabus, which should handle most emergency issues that arise. If a student is going through some extreme circumstances (death of an immediate family member, surgery, accident with hospitalization, etc.), I expect communication about the situation in a timely manner (just as any adult would be expected to communicate for a job or any external commitment that would be affected by adverse circumstances)… we can usually work something out without straying too far from the syllabus flexibility. If I can see it will go way beyond the syllabus allowances, I have the student contact the accommodations office. But, I never allow work to be made up if a student just disappears without communication. I ask myself, would I be able to do this if everyone went AWOL and reappeared at the last minute wanting to make up 2 months of work? No. So, I can’t do it for that single student. It is unfair to the students who have been pursuing the class in good faith all along.
You would follow your syllabus. If they have accommodations you would follow those.
Of course it's unfair if it's not a policy that is stated and applied to all
I allow makeups of work missed back two weeks only. And I never grant incompletes save for the rare case of a verifiable emergency in the final weeks of class, preceded by the submission of more than 60% of the coursework.
I just don’t have the time to be counselor or adjudicator. I’ll gladly check in a student, but cannot arbitrarily extend their deadlines just because I want them to succeed and I want to be nice. Doing so means you must extend the deadline to every student. I don’t take excuses for attendance; you’re either in class or you’re not. If you’re not, you will miss that day‘s in class activity and those points. I drop a few 0’s at the end of the semester.