Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[ciao_yall]

If this year is any indication, concussions and best-friend suicides are the new dead grandmothers.

I would probably come down hard on a student if I found they lied about a suicide. It would really bother me.

I'm always confused about the skepticism. I have uncles. At the moment, they are all fine, as far as I know, but someday, they won't be. And when that happens, I might have to cancel class to go to a funeral. People, unfortunately, do commit suicide, and die of drug overdoses. Some of those people might be close to my students. Students also have concussions, especially if they play sports, and they tend to get diagnosed more now, and taken more seriously.

Perhaps, it helps that I'm always flexible about due dates and have an attendance policy that doesn't distinguish between excused and unexcused absences. It leaves me free to believe what my students tell me, which seems like a better way to go through life.

I'm not saying that I'm always skeptical when students give me such excuses. I do think that low-performing students with a history of spotty attendance and shoddy work tend to fall back on "excuses" that have the strong emotional component: death in the family, debilitating injury, etc. Those students used to use "dead grandma" as an excuse. Now, I think it's concussions. So the student who didn't turn in Scaffolding Assignment 1 because they had to rush their friend to the hospital, and didn't take Midterm Exam because of their childhood best friend killed themselves (requiring a flight home), now wants a three-week extension on Major Writing Project because of a concussion. It's usually at this point that I tell them a medical or hardship withdrawal might be appropriate, given that they've turned in zero major work in 8 weeks.

Yeah, I've obviously had those students too. Most of the time I doubt that they are actually lying. It is just that they are easily derailed and I suspect they are making excuses to themselves as well as me. Sometimes this is about attitude. Other times, it might have more to do with the structure around them.

It's less about whether or not the student is telling the truth and more about whether or not they actually deliver the work.

My rule was that I didn't take anything late. They had to turn in their notes if that was all they had, and I graded those. Sometimes there was enough good content to pull out a C or D.

And for exams they were allowed to do them as take-homes if they wanted. They would be open book, open note anyway so not as though they could cheat.

For extreme situations I would allow the final to count for the full midterm or interim paper grade.

By the time the final exam/paper rolled around (1) I knew who was generally going to fail anyway and not worth the trouble, versus who was generally doing a good job and (2) They knew the drill for late work (NO).

So if they did ask for flexibility at that point I asked them what they needed. And as long as they delivered on their self-declared deadline and it didn't hold up any of my grading or reporting, whatevs.

[downer]

Now I'm confused. If a student says someone close to them died so they could not come to class, and in fact no one close to them died, isn't that lying?

I don't care about most lying, and I also engage in my own lying sometimes. I am bothered by some lies though, such as ones about suicide.

[ciao_yall]

Now I'm confused. If a student says someone close to them died so they could not come to class, and in fact no one close to them died, isn't that lying?

I don't care about most lying, and I also engage in my own lying sometimes. I am bothered by some lies though, such as ones about suicide.

What would you have to go through to prove whether or not the student was, in fact lying? Do you want to go through that effort?

If not, you have a choice. Believe them, or don't believe them but act as if you believe them, figuring that if they were the kind of person to lie about something like that they probably had bigger problems in their lives than your class.

[marshwiggle]

Now I'm confused. If a student says someone close to them died so they could not come to class, and in fact no one close to them died, isn't that lying?

I don't care about most lying, and I also engage in my own lying sometimes. I am bothered by some lies though, such as ones about suicide.

What would you have to go through to prove whether or not the student was, in fact lying? Do you want to go through that effort?

This is critical. Do you want someone to have to produce the death certificate of their best friend or parent just so you know they're telling the truth? I don't.

With many of these kinds of rules, the problem is that the difficulty it creates for the people with legitimate claims is big, while it ultimately has little effect on the scammers who'll just try to game the system some other way.

[Caracal]

What would you have to go through to prove whether or not the student was, in fact lying? Do you want to go through that effort?

If not, you have a choice. Believe them, or don't believe them but act as if you believe them, figuring that if they were the kind of person to lie about something like that they probably had bigger problems in their lives than your class.

Exactly. And if you have a set procedure for dealing with requests than you are free to believe them, because it wouldn't really matter if you didn't. My policy is kind of exactly the opposite of Ciao's, I will always grant an extension, within reason. It accomplishes the same thing though. I'll give you the extension if you just managed your time poorly, so if you're really lying about your dead relative, then you're just being weird.

[RatGuy]

For me, this isn't an issue of "I think they're lying, let's nail them." My policies, and those of the department, are structured in such a way that I don't need to see doctors' notes or other sorts of documentation. A student missing the midterm is a student misses the midterm, whether he said it's because of a friend's death, mono, or that they overslept. My point is that the students who are doing poorly in the class for reasons such as "not showing up" or " never buying the book" are also the students who have excuses with the most pathos, be it the Dead Grandmothers of 1999 or the Concussions of 2018. Sure, that might mean that these students are the ones who have lots of extracurricular issues that result in such dramatic events. Or, these students (and, if I might generalize, they're almost always fraternity boys) have found that such excuses usually forestall any questions of documentation.

So, no. I don't ask them for documentation. And, yes, I apply my makeup policies consistently. It's just the trends I'm noticing, and I suspect that it's also respective to my university.

[downer]

The issue of proof of an excuse is critical, I agree. I try to avoid it whenever possible. But there are times when it is unavoidable.

When necessary, I'm happy to ask to see doctor's notes, hospital bills, accident reports, court documents, and I have asked for death notices too. If I trust the student, I will let it slide. If I strongly suspect the student is lying, I will push hard.

[EdnaMode]

When I first started teaching I would worry about whether a student was telling the truth or not, and required that they produce some sort of proof, but eventually decided for my own sanity that I was not going to put myself in the position of being the excuse police. I have policies in my syllabus for most scenarios of late work, missed labs, missed exams, etc. I'm sure some of them are lying, but if they are, then they have their reasons. And sometimes I get information that I really didn't need to know, supported by paperwork including "I was in jail," and "here's a link to the news article about my car wreck." One of the funnier incidents was when a student emailed saying he was missing lecture because he had "the flue" and couldn't be around people for 48 hours. I replied and told him to consult the syllabus for the official policy when classes are missed, and that I hoped he felt better soon. Not even two hours later, I was leaving the grocery store as he was walking in laughing and joking with some friends, not looking at all like he was ill. He saw me, looked appalled, and I just nodded, said hi, and kept walking. I guessed that he just didn't feel like coming to class that day, and it was his choice.

[polly_mer]

For me, this isn't an issue of "I think they're lying, let's nail them." My policies, and those of the department, are structured in such a way that I don't need to see doctors' notes or other sorts of documentation. A student missing the midterm is a student misses the midterm, whether he said it's because of a friend's death, mono, or that they overslept. My point is that the students who are doing poorly in the class for reasons such as "not showing up" or " never buying the book" are also the students who have excuses with the most pathos, be it the Dead Grandmothers of 1999 or the Concussions of 2018. Sure, that might mean that these students are the ones who have lots of extracurricular issues that result in such dramatic events. Or, these students (and, if I might generalize, they're almost always fraternity boys) have found that such excuses usually forestall any questions of documentation.

So, no. I don't ask them for documentation. And, yes, I apply my makeup policies consistently. It's just the trends I'm noticing, and I suspect that it's also respective to my university.

I tended to have different policies for classes with different goals (e.g., science for teachers has a very different goal than thermodynamics for engineers).  I agree that consistency is the key.

However, I did have to sometimes apply CC_Alan's "when you wear the big hat, then you get to decide what constitutes needing an exception for exceptional circumstances".

For example, I remember the tragedy that was a group house filled with students that burned down one night.  I had several students show up for class the next day long enough to turn in their completed work (culmination of a few weeks so most people would have been done before the news spread) and then leave immediately in tears.  I even accepted emailed submissions when I generally don't because anyone who is making any kind of an effort is getting a pass at this point.  Documentation is irrelevant at this point and it's just cruel to those who need a little break.

As another example, I had an excellent student who had a very poorly timed, bad 48 hours that included the day the big project was due.  She showed up an hour late in tears with a practically empty binder and a stack of unpunched papers to go in the binder.  Her printer died.  Her car died.  The loaner car died.  The second loaner car got stuck in the traffic behind an accident on the one road into town.  It took three tries to find a printer on campus that worked because we were having network outages. 

The whole class looked at me in shock because they knew that I had been death on deadlines all term and had rejected assignments all term for being 10 minutes late or in an improper format.  Was I really going to have the A student drop to a C- because of a bad day? 

No, I handed the student my three-hole punch and said, life happens; go sit with your group and get the papers punched to turn in the final portfolio.  Since this was the science for teachers course, I also gave a little spiel on this being one common enough situation for which I, as the teacher, had structured the course to be a continuously improving portfolio.  Someone who had been keeping up all along will be fine as long as they turn in something better than the last revision (hence the printing again).  The learning has already been accomplished by keeping up all term and doing revisions based on feedback so applying the penalty now is just being punitive instead of helping the student learn. 

We then joked to cheer up the student with oops, that one's punched crooked, gonna fail for sure now, and similar silliness.

In contrast, I had several people over the years who took three tries to get through the class because they didn't believe that a string of zeros would result in an F.  Excused, unexcused, not turned in, or just plain bad doesn't matter.  People who don't demonstrate mastery of the work don't pass, even when I know how hard their life is this term.  I helped more than one student file for a medical or other hardship withdrawal because that's more important than this term's grade.

[fishbrains]

Like others, my current policy doesn't delineate between excused vs. unexcused absences. Students do the work or they don't. I'll be flexible up to a point.

I changed my policy when, because of the "excused" vs. "unexcused" silliness, I had to challenge a student's assertion that her father her had died and that's why she hadn't been in class for over three weeks. She couldn't produce a funeral flyer, obituary, or death notice. She couldn't tell me the name of the funeral home or where he was buried. Nothing. I was 98.3% sure that she was lying, but, more importantly, I was 100% sure that I didn't care. Hence the change in policy. I gave her the chance to turn in the late work (there was that 1.7% chance that I would end up looking like Satan himself); but, you know, lying slackers gotta keep-on slacking and lying, and she didn't pass. 

Caracal, all I'm sayin' is that I'm glad your uncles are all fine, but it's probably because they aren't in the throes of the deadly combination of living in Alabama and your being in my class at same time. Ain't no cure for that.

[Caracal]

but, you know, lying slackers gotta keep-on slacking and lying, and she didn't pass. 

Indeed. If you'd sooner make up a story that your father died than do the work or accept the penalty for not doing it, you probably are not the kind of person who is going to actually ever get the thing done. You might be the kind of person who will then plagiarize the whole paper, but that's a separate issue...

[fishbrains]

but, you know, lying slackers gotta keep-on slacking and lying, and she didn't pass. 

Indeed. If you'd sooner make up a story that your father died than do the work or accept the penalty for not doing it, you probably are not the kind of person who is going to actually ever get the thing done. You might be the kind of person who will then plagiarize the whole paper, but that's a separate issue...

This was a lesson I learned from my first dean: Don't get sucked into the personal drama of excused vs. unexcused. Just give them the second chance and 75% won't do the work, 15% will cut and paste from Wikipedia and make Turnitin blush, and 10% will do the work and be eternally grateful for the 2nd chance (your results may vary). Any way it works out, I look good with very little effort on my part.

Note: My CC is big on the "working with students" thing, although I'm not sure it does much good for the students overall.

[Chemystery]

To whoever is telling my students that I will be impressed if they keep coming to me to ask for more resources to help them practice:

Please update your message to reflect that I will NOT be impressed if their answer to the question of whether they have tried using the resources I have already provided is consistently "no."

[Parasaurolophus]

More boneheaded plagiarism. Totally incoherent essay contains a few surprisingly cogent lines, about material not covered in the class.

Encyclopedia Britannica. Bam!

[FishProf]

Dear student,

Yes, now that you have the letter from the Disabilities Services Office, you get the accommodations of extra time on exams and quizzes.

No, they are not retroactive.

No, time and a half doesn't make the 15 min quiz a 30 min quiz for you.

No, I don't want to talk to your mom about what they did in high school for accommodations.

Fishprof