Thursday, February 02, 2006

Why can't you just do what I told you?

Grrr...

I went downtown today with several students to attend a Mass in memory of the late Coretta Scott King celebrated by our local archbishop. The setup was all very last-minute, and the need for chaperones was dire, so I volunteered my services and left three of my classes to the able hands of my colleagues.

The Mass was quite lovely; one of the intown parishes sent their exquisite gospel choir to augment the liturgy. Normally I disapprove very strongly of "Communion meditations," which strike me as a means of introducing performance into a prayer that should be focused on the community, but I'm very willing to make an exception for such glorious music as this group made. They sang "Straight and Narrow Way" with a soprano soloist who sounded like Leontyne Price. It absolutely sent chills down my spine.

When I returned to school in time to substitute for another teacher's last-period class, I discovered that some of my students in one class had made the executive decision that the in-class writing assignment I had left for them was a suggestion and not a command. They had opted not to write the essay, and they turned in Free Rides in lieu of their essays.

A Free Ride is a pass I issue each student at the beginning of the term. My class rules are strict (no bathroom trips unless it's a medical emergency, no locker trips, no gum-chewing, no sleeping, etc.) and my reading assignments can be long. I like to give the students a bit of personal responsibility and freedom of choice -- hence the Free Ride. It's good for one bathroom/locker trip, one reading quiz, one minor homework assignment, one extra night to work on a paper...but once it's gone, it's gone. And the catch is that the Free Ride, if stapled to one's final exam, is worth 5 bonus points on the raw score of the exam. (Since my exams are usually out of 200 points, and the exam is worth 20% of the final grade, the Free Ride can only mathematically make a difference of 0.5% in the actual grade (if my math is correct). But the kids think it's a big deal and they treat those Free Rides like they're gold-plated.) Basically, the Free Ride is worth about 5 points any way you slice it.

The assignment I left today was a 50 point assignment. And they blithely decided that it would be okay for them not to do it, despite clear and specific instructions that the assignment was to be completed and turned in at the end of the class. One student out of the seven or eight who didn't do the assignment came to me after school to question whether or not it was all right for him to have ignored my instructions. When informed that it most certainly was not all right and that he owed me a paper, he asked for an additional copy of the instructions so that he could write a paper and turn it in tomorrow. Fine.

My knee-jerk reaction was to give the miscreants zeros on the assignment and to keep the Free Rides. But then the voice of reason and the voice of mercy piped up in my mind. (Inconvenient conscience and compassion!) I'm going to give the students who did what I asked a study day tomorrow and give the students who didn't do it the chance to write the essay for full credit. The Free Rides that they turned in will excuse the lateness of the assignment, as under most circumstances our departmental policy is that late papers may receive a grade no higher than C.

*sigh* Well, they wouldn't be teenagers if they didn't do wild and wacky stuff that confounded adults, would they?