Student email, received earlier today:I am grateful for your concern with my absence and I send my apologies. I certainly didn’t want to miss this many lectures. I have been told to explain my situation for you to understand of why current circumstances have led to the cause of my absence.
However, the situation is a bit more complicated because it has something to do with work and involves several people. Speaking of it further would have their private information surfacing and it is a legal matter, which is why I haven’t said anything at all. It’s too much of a risk if something was accidently said since even I could lose everything. In turn, I am working longer hours than I did before starting back in school because of this condition.
I love the impression he gives that if he told me any more, he just might have to kill me. I believe the above email was intended to get me to offer extra credit, late submissions, or waived absence penalties. However, he never asked for those things and I am hardly going to offer them.
Especially if he "could lose everything" for risking "private information surfacing."
Oh, students. You are adorable sometimes.
Hilaaaaaarious. Be careful if he wants to meet to discuss this at 2am in the parking garage south of campus...
ReplyDeleteI never know how to respond to emails like this. A student gives me an excuse that doesn't matter one way or another, and I'm supposed to respond how? When it's face to face, it's even worse. I used to say, "Ok." But so many of them think "ok" means that I've excused their absences, which I haven't. So now, I stare blankly trying to think of how to respond. I don't care about these stupid excuses.
ReplyDeleteSo, how do you respond?
@Mestopholita:
ReplyDeleteMy response depends in part on how I'm dealing with the whole issue of attendance. My attendance policy sometimes differs from semester to semester, depending on how creative I'm trying to be in getting students to turn up and/or participate in the class.
Some semesters, I have a fairly strict attendance policy, whereby more than X absences results in a reduced grade, and more than Y absences results in failure of the course. This semester, however, I decided to go a different route and not worry too much about actual attendance; instead, I bumped up the participation component of the course considerably, and students who miss too many classes will simply get an F for that component of the course.
Anyway, one thing I generally do is make clear to students that their reasons are not, for the most part, relevant to me. In a class where absences can result in reduced grades or failure of the class, I usually just say something like, "I'm not really concerned with why you missed class. Just make sure that you're aware of the policy about absences, because I take that policy seriously. Missing more than X classes will result in a grade reduction, and missing more than Y classes is grounds for failing the course altogether."
In classes where the main stick for attendance is the participation grade, I say, "I'm not really concerned with why you missed class. Just be aware that absences make it impossible for you to participate in class discussions, and that your participation grade constitutes W% of your final grade."
In talking about this stuff face-to-face with students, one thing I try to do (and I'm not sure how successful I am) is present an attitude that is a mixture of seriousness and indifference. What I mean by that is that I make very clear to the students that my attendance/participation policy is serious, and will be followed strictly, but I also try to make clear that the issue of their attendance is one that I do not spend much time worrying. They're adults, and it's up to them whether they come to class or not; they just need to be aware of the consequences.
From the OP, it sounds like Academic Monkey actually emailed this student to express concern about the student's absences. I don't do that. Maybe it makes me a bad teacher, but I tell them very clearly at the beginning of the semester that I'm not going to be chasing them down for unsubmitted papers, or to ask why they're not attending class. While I have them sign a sign-in sheet for each class meeting, I don't obsessively check that sheet each week to see who is coming and who isn't. I go over the sheets at the end of the semester, count up the absences, and if anyone is over the limit, the class policy kicks in and they lose marks or fail the class.
"Dear Student,
ReplyDeleteIn order to excuse your absences, I will need a letter from our academic support office. Bring any documentation to them within one week of your missed class.
Regards,
Dr. Ben"
I have this text saved as a signature in Outlook. I simply click reply, select this signature and presto. I'm done.
I only emailed the student to remind him that he was about to be dropped for lack of participation (automatic university policy) and he replied with this nonesense.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I get the overly long description of a child's illness or the in-depth description of how loud a coworker is and why this somehow prevents them from working on a paper at night, I always respond with the same thing:
"Thank you for emailing me. You don't need to explain; I trust you to make the best decision for your situation."
This puts the onus on them. They made the decision to put little Timmy's health ahead of their education -- an understandable decision -- but I'm not going to retroactively change the course requirements in order to accommodate their decisions.
Because I "trust" that they have made the best decision, whatever the consequences.
Mesto-
ReplyDeleteI had the same problem so now I say, "Huh."
Extra credit. The Holy Grail.
ReplyDelete@Wayworn Wanderer
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if my experience reflects changing times, or changing places, or both. I did my undergraduate degree in my home country (British Commonwealth) in the 1990s, and then came to the United States for graduate school.
Before I arrived in America, I had never even heard of extra credit. When I first heard it described, my reaction was that the idea behind extra credit seems to be: "I didn't put any effort in the first time, so now I get another chance to do what I should have done before."
I still feel that way, for the most part, and I refuse to offer extra credit in any of my classes. I'm not going to make more work for myself just so the students can test me out with some mediocre work in order to discover whether or not I'm a tough grader. The students who ask for extra credit generally seem to be the ones who aren't very engaged with the class in the first place. That's fine, as long as they understand the consequences of poor quality work.
I think that extra credit has only one valid purpose: the encouragement of having students go above and beyond the course requirements. See a lecture related to class themes; watch and review a movie that explores what we learned; attend a museum and write a response paper on how what you saw supports/contradicts what our readings said about BLANK.
ReplyDeleteThings you can't require, because what if students can't make it to the museum or see that movie or whatever out of class, but would be helpful to the student if they could.
I never offer extra credit as makeup work.
@Defunct -- I did my undergrad in Canada during roughly the same period, and I never heard of a professor offering 'extra credit' work, either.
ReplyDeleteI never heard of extra credit of the sort students today seek during high school (private, not-terribly-selective American prep school, late '70s/early '80s) or college (American Ivy, mid-'80s). I think we occasionally had extra-credit *questions* at the ends of tests and exams -- sometimes fiendishly hard ones of the "let's see whether anybody can do anything with this" variety. But I can't remember being able to do some sort of relatively easy extra project, or attend an event, or anything along those lines, and get points for it. Maybe I got extra credit for reading extra books in elementary school (which for me counted as very easy, very enjoyable project), but I'm not sure about even that.
ReplyDeleteBut my students ask for it all the time. In fact, I had one student ask about it on the first day this semester. And another managed to suggest, in the course of 5 minutes, that they should get extra credit for showing up on Halloween, that I should have baked, and that, failing that, I should have brought candy (more proof, I suppose, that I look like mom/grandmom to them. I told her I'd start baking when the grading was all done, which *might* be in time to make Christmas treats for my own friends and family).
I am considering offering some limited extra credit next term, but only in a fairly challenging class with a lot of group work that I think lends itself to that strategy. Students who go above and beyond to gather information that would benefit not only their own but others' projects and report back responsible might be able to earn a few points toward the final grade, with a clear ceiling (probably 5 points). Has anybody tried that? Or maybe I should post a separate thirsty? Maybe I'll do that.
To combine these two topics:
ReplyDeleteOnce, while teaching in a square state, I had a student disappear for a month. When he returned he explained that he had been on an international mission for "the company" and that he could tell me nothing further because all information was on a "need to know" basis and I didn't have the necessary governmental clearance.
I asked him how a high level operative ended up taking an intro course at a CC in the middle of nowhere and was told that this was his "cover".
He then asked what "extra credit" was available. I gave him a hit list.
Fiddlebright, hilarious.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing more authentic to sustain a cover than coming up with elaborate tales for missing class and then failing your introductory CC class.
Well done (clap clap clap) Braaaavo, student. You really know your mark.
Sounds like fiddlebright had Doonesbury's Red Rascal in hir class.
ReplyDelete