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?