Accommodations and group projects

[kaysixteen]

Well here we go... Could have been better, but probably could have been worse.  In no particular order of observation:
1) one of the groups, a 2-man one (remember I had to group students according to major) just simply did not show.  I emailed them afterwards saying they could do it Thursday if I get a valid excuse note from doc or campus admin, otherwise it's a zero.  We will see what happens.
2) One group was substantially better than the other one in terms of actually trying to engage with its assigned article, whereas the other one really just gave a 'what is social science' Wikipedia-style presentation.  That said, when I reread the chapters Wednesday in preparation, it dawned on me that the chapters really were likely too hard for these kids in this course.  I used this book in a hs course twice, and never had anything resembling the lack of understanding and interaction with it in hs as I had here.  I'll go real easy in grading.
3)paradoxically, the much better presentation had a different issue.  In it, 3 of 4 students, all nonnative speakers of English, spoke with such thick accents that I just didn't get everything they said, nor do I think they always knew the exact English phraseology to use for what they wanted to say.  I ain't gonna penalize them for this either.
4) all in all, I can and will do a much better job choosing assignments for myself next semester.

As to Polly's comments on library use, there's just no reason to waste class time bringing a librarian to the class.  I gave them much morethan library skills training in this class than the schedule even called for, because of my own MLS background, but they can go to the reference desk to get articles selection assistance, and one of the goals of this class is to build college-ing skills in any case.  IMO, pretty much all of these kids, save one or maybe two, are taken as a whole currently ready for college work, and it's my job to try to teach them skills to get ready, at least in the reading and study skills areas, and I'm doing a very good job teaching these skills.

[polly_mer]

it's my job to try to teach them skills to get ready, at least in the reading and study skills areas, and I'm doing a very good job teaching these skills.

Not by any report you've given here.  From the reports you give here, someone else should be employed who has the specialized skills and interests to help these struggling students.

[kaysixteen]

I am an expert in these reading and study skills subjects, having taught them for years, mostly at the hs level.   I possess a humanities PhD an an MLS, and have also taught three humanities subjects in college.   I'm doing the best job possible given the low level of literacy, whether due to ESL status, bad hs preparation, etc, low level of student preparation, and subpar text and syllabus expectations I'm stuck with using.  No one could be doing a better job.  You, otoh, are an engineer who nonetheless seem regularly to blather on about humanities subjects, hs competencies, etc, of which you know next to nothing, despite having taken some humanities courses in college.

[polly_mer]

No one could be doing a better job.

If you can't teach the students because they aren't ready, then that's a strong argument for better preparation before the students get to college and eliminating remedial work at the college level.  If no one could be doing a better job, then let's have the students go do something elsewhere they can be successful and eliminate the college-level faculty job to free up a highly qualified person to go do something where they can be successful.  If the student need is middle school/high school, then that's where those faculty jobs should be.

ESL for adult learners is its own thing and should be a special program separate from remediation of people who graduated high school, but aren't actually educated through a high school level.  Being really great with study skills is a different expertise than knowing how to assist smart people who are acquiring proficiency in an additional culture and language.  Teaching foreign language is not the same as the cultural assimilation for daily tasks.

My biggest frustration is faculty who don't know the actual research on education at any level, but are sure their experiences generalize enough that research doesn't matter.  If only the graduate-trained humanities folks can understand higher education through their personal experiences, then the rest of us truly don't need general education at the college-level that is so heavily focused on the humanities and should be allowed to specialize.

This particular case has nothing to do with humanities and everything to do with mismanaged K-12 education resulting in students in college who are not at all ready for college.  Insisting that a humanities education trumps actually knowing the research (i.e., the work product of highly educated people who study this particular problem) just underscores the problems with assuming that a college degree is generalizable to all areas of human knowledge because smart people who went to school for a long time can do anything.

[kaysixteen]

As a follow-up, a couple of additional queries:
1. The young man with the accommodations letter is supposed to get double time for quizzes, etc., but he's supposed to invoke that right when/if he wants to use it,  so today, on the quiz, when it was clear that he was not close to being done when everyone else was but that he was also going to pass it un anyhow, I took him out into hall to ask him whether he wanted to use accommodations... He decided to do so.  Now I've not yet graded quiz, but am wondering, whether you all think i should have done this, when he clearly wasn't done, had several questions unanswered, etc, but just as clearly was not going to exercise his accommodations righrs without my prompting?
2, related to this, two more students sent 'I'm sick and can't come to take quiz'emails today.  One, the best student in class, said she'd been to hospital and would bring documentation, but the other, a  much less conscientious student with 2 prior absences, merely claimed illness (though I believe him), and our campus infirmary and dean of students offices BOTH will not write health excuse notes.  I'm going to let both make up quiz, though I don't know about the third student who wrote no email at all, but the question I have is, is it worth it to even set ostensibly rigid syllabus dates for quizzes, presentations, etc., when students often won't show claiming health issues, AND there's no campus mechanism for verification of such claims?  And if I were to jettison such dating requirements, what/how, to do in their stead?
3, lastly, is the pretty demonstrably immature, high schoolish behavior my students are for the most part regularly demonstrating likely to be due to the remedial nature of the course, or just incidental?

[polly_mer]

1.  Don't let people invoke accommodations at their convenience.  Check with the disabilities office as to whether you can send the quiz to them to have it proctored for the appropriate time or whether you need to set up for the full time yourself as part of preparation.  This guy can leave early if he finishes early, but plan from the beginning for him to have the maximum time.  That makes your life easier.

2.  Pick a policy and stick with it.  Again, it makes your life easier to have a standard process (e.g., drop N assignments in each category for everyone and a missed quiz counts as one of the drops, make ups for anyone who notifies, final exam replaces all missed quizzes/exams, all work for the semester is due by 6 pm on the very last day before finals, no late assignments ever) where you don't have to make any case-by-case decisions. 

At the level where droves of students are disengaged from their own education, do whatever is easiest for you and stick with it.  The person who misses one quiz or paper will be fine, regardless of your policy.  The person who misses substantial fractions of work will not pass as long as you have any reasonable policy and record the grade earned.  That person also won't have a leg on which to stand for a formal complaint as long as your policy is written in the syllabus and you stick to it for everyone.

3. The behavior you observe is likely a reflection of the institutional culture.  Students who are fully invested in their education and have enough bandwidth to make classes a priority are different from students who desire better lives through a credential, but have complicated current circumstances or students who are merely going through some motions because they think school is where they ought to be.  This may have nothing to do with age so much as why the students are in your class and what they hope to get out of it.  Again, ESL students are likely to be very different from the students who are underprepared, don't want to learn if that requires effort, and are just waiting out their dismissal so they can quit school.