Category Archives: late work

Ruminations on Grading and Homework

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After attending a few different language conferences this year, I’m scratching my head thinking about grading percentages, homework, and late work. Since meeting other teachers who are on proficiency and mastery-based grading systems, I love the idea of assessing students for what they are actually capable of or how much they grow by the end of the year. And again, on the bus ride home from Shalom last week, Tiz and I had a great conversation about how to approach late work that still has me scratching my head. 
Homework, for better or worse, is one of my least favorite aspects of this job. Back in my day (full disclosure: I’ve always wanted to use this phrase) I was the annoying senior who had 7 classes every day, took all honors and AP classes, played three varsity sports, and did all my homework into the wee hours of the night in order to be able to turn it in on time Every. Single. Day… I’m exhausted just thinking about my high school days. And while I didn’t have the constant distraction that is social media, I had something equally painful — AOL Instant Messaging. Yep, teens have been finding ways to avoid doing work since the dawn of time. I always figured if I could juggle all of that, why can’t other students do the same on the more humane block or modified block schedules? (I realize how unfair it is for me to even ask this question.)
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t assign homework. Is homework fair, equitable, and just? I am always wondering about how many of my students have to work to support their parents, take care of their younger siblings, take care of ailing parents or grandparents, spend several hours commuting (walk, to bus, to BART, to bus, to home), or anything else that teens are having to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Yet, for most of this year, I have assigned homework three times a week. And my syllabus states that late work incurs late penalties.
But how do I ensure that students are actually doing the homework themselves? Even in instances of recording themselves speaking French, how can I be sure they haven’t Google Translated an entire script, memorized, and then hit record? How do I know they aren’t sharing answers? How do I know someone else who speaks French isn’t doing it for them or helping them? How do I know they aren’t doing it because they’re pulled into too many directions? How do I know they aren’t doing it because they simply aren’t good at time management? How do I know they aren’t doing it because they frankly just don’t care?
In terms of collecting late work: is it fair to accept work nearly a month late and give the same grade as a student who did the work on their own and submitted it when it was due? Is it fair to me to continue grading homework all around the clock because students are turning work in when they get to it? Is it fair for a student’s grade to tank because, while they’re performing relatively well in class, they just aren’t keeping up with the homework? 
Is it fair for us to require students to be at school from 8-3 (or even 7-5 if students have 0 period and do after-school sports and extracurriculars), and also complete several more hours of homework per night? Are we as educators doing our jobs if we can’t fit everything we need into our class periods?
I don’t have an answer to any of these questions and the more I think about them, the more concerned I become!
So here are my (MANY) questions for you, fellow educators whom I deeply respect:

  • Do you assign homework? 
  • How much homework do you assign per week? 
  • How long do you expect students to work on your assignments per night? 
  • What kind of assignments do you have students do at home? 
  • Is homework a category in your grade book? 
  • Do you assign late penalties? 
  • What do you do if a student submits a major assignment a day, week, or even month late? 
  • Is it easy to spot if your students are cheating on these assignments or not? 
  • Have you noticed the students feverishly working in the halls before your classes comparing answers or trying to finish work? 
  • Are students complaining about homework when they enter your classrooms each day?
  • If you assign work in Schoology, how many of your students are submitting their assignments past midnight on any given day? 
  • What percentage of your students are actually doing all of their homework? 
  • If you’re not assigning homework, what does your grade book percentage breakdown look like?
I’ve dabbled in optional homework this month prior to Spring Break. I’m merely asking students to listen to French music and pick their favorites, which we sometimes discuss in class. To be honest: I even polled my students. They all told me they’re studying vocab or grammar on their own outside of class in addition to the homework I assign. I really haven’t even noticed a difference in their performance on classwork and assessments since removing the homework aspect from my classes this month. Instead, I am trusting that students are studying what they need when they need to. To be transparent, I’m counting performance on classwork and projects in the homework category instead of homework to ensure that my students still receive steady grading input and feedback each week. 
But… I can’t help but think there must be a better way to go about this. Thank you, in advance, for helping me think through this issue.

Late work consequences have me in a Tizzy

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Late work consequences have me in a Tizzy
I knew boundaries were going to be a problem for me when I
entered teaching a few years ago. Teachers need boundaries in order to maintain
sanity. For example, I am slowly learning that it’s important to allow the
evening to be family time, even if parents email me. I am learning that if I
give myself the entire weekend to plan, I will use the entire weekend to plan.
I may explore this work-life balance in a future blog,
because it’s a struggle for me to put aside work and focus on self-care and
family. Perhaps it’s because I am a newish teacher, still excited, still
exploring, still learning, still idealistic. Still insecure.
But today I need to reach out to my colleagues about a
different sort of boundary. I am terrible at following the policies I put down
on my course outline at the beginning of the year. One of the toughest
categories for me centers around late work. Practically speaking, it is hard to
be consistent and to track who I gave an extension to, how many days late
something is, how many points I said I was going to take off for lateness … not
my forte. Not to mention I am confused about the interplay of toughness and
redemption.
In my credential program, I learned that tying points to
behavior is considered passé. My general sense is that at Carondelet, we don’t
believe in it either. Grades should reflect mastery of skills. Behavioral
issues should have non-grade consequences. I’m going to digress from my
struggle about late work for a moment to provide a dual example of a logical
consequence and my own ineffective enforcement of it. If a student comes to
class unprepared and asks to go to her locker to retrieve a book, I do not take
points off her grade. Instead, as I said
in my course outline, she will receive a tardy because coming unprepared is
almost the same as arriving late. But … I haven’t kept up with this rule. If
one of these sweet Carondelet girls asks me if she can run to her locker for
her book I smile and say, “Sure. Go ahead … hurry!” I may, depending on mood,
add “But next time you need to come prepared.”
I think I am a softy, and knowing that, I want to be more
careful about the policies I set up: Am I willing to enforce them? If so, I
need to do it, or I won’t feel very good about myself down the line. That’s the
thing about boundaries: we set them for ourselves. They represent a line we
draw about what is acceptable to us. Letting people cross my boundaries makes
me feel gross inside. And if I know that I can’t enforce my boundary, perhaps I
need to question why I set it in the first place. Is it because I thought I
should, based on some classroom management guru’s advice?
Sometimes, though, we know that the boundaries we set are
for our students’ benefit. We want our students to grow into women of heart,
faith, courage, and excellence. They need guidelines and parameters. My
question for you all is, what is a logical consequence for turning in work
late? And how can I be true to our culture of redemption and encouragement
without doing a disservice to these girls? I have some students who are one
month late on an important assignment. I want them to complete the work and to
learn. I want to assess the work fairly. But there has to be some consequence
for being this late. Otherwise, students are learning that deadlines do not
have to be respected. Meeting deadlines is a life skill; one students will need
in college and the workplace in order to succeed. Beyond that, we are talking
about an interpersonal skill. Students need to learn respect for other people’s
time and feelings—they cannot cross others’ personal boundaries without
consequence. I am troubled by the message I send when I accept one-month late
work without a consequence that stings. Even if I am well-intentioned in wanting
to be merciful and supportive. I often find myself expressing gratitude to a
student for following through so that I finally
can change the zero placeholder in the grade book. I think the zero has
bothered me more than it has bothered the student all this time!
I recently came up with one logical consequence, but it only
applies in certain situations. In the same spirit of learning, I try to offer
my students the opportunity to rewrite their essays after receiving my feedback
and a grade. When some students turned in their essays a week late, I decided they
had lost the privilege of a rewrite opportunity because now I was grading their
first attempt at the same time I was grading their peers’ rewrites. The
insanity has to stop somewhere.
I have thus far been comfortable with taking off a little for
lateness … but a month late? Is 10% enough of a consequence? Is it fair to the
other students? Should I say that the highest you can earn is a C- if you turn
something in that late? My son’s middle school core teacher won’t accept late
work and he feels quite clear and secure in knowing what the boundary is. He
gets two late passes per year, and they allow him to be one day late. He said
that after one month, he wouldn’t even expect his teacher to accept anything.
But, I tell him, I do want my students to finish the work because it’s
valuable.  We go back and forth. He wants
me to be tougher.
My final musing on the subject goes like this: Maybe turning
in work late isn’t a behavioral issue that must be treated outside the grade
book. Maybe meeting an assignment’s deadline is an integral and crucial part of
the nature of school work. Even if I can get my head around that, and I think I
can, I wonder what the magic numbers are. How late before we don’t accept it at
all? What is the ratio between late days/weeks and percentages off the grade?
I want to hear from my colleagues on this. Do you struggle
as I do? Do you have a good system you can share?