What do you think of nit picky teachers? 6th grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

Wait. Her MOM called you? Is this a thing now? I am floored that parents now think it is OK to call their child's university professors to plead for special favors (or for any reason). I would have been absolutely mortified if my parents had done this.

NP. This is off topic to this thread but since you ask, the answer is that parents feel emboldened to do this because colleges have turned parents into consumers with power. They charge such ridiculous prices for tuition and fees now. My alma mater costs 75k a year including room and board. It was under 35k when I attended 20 years ago. There is no way on earth it is truly "worth" 75k except that there are some people (about 1200 families per year) who can afford it.

When my kids are old enough to attend, it'll probably be close to 100k. You better believe I will be PISSED if I hand over 400k to a school to educate my kid and a professor pulls a stunt like the one above.

Don't charge astronomical prices and you'll get more reasonable responses. The more you charge, the more you empower people as consumers who can EASILY go elsewhere and take their money with them.

+ 1

I see college professors complaining about parents alllll the time on these boards and else where and I just want to laugh at them. They did it to themselves!!!!

You made your bed with bad choices. Now you have to lie in it.

Guess what, it's only going to get worse!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to say, I'm surprised how many people support OP's position that the grade should be changed because the kid knows the material. I think you all are setting yourselves and your children up for failure. And the ideas of parents stepping in and trying to fix college grades and high school grades is the worst example of helicoptering I have seen in a while.

I am an employer and I just know the people in the workforce that simply cannot follow directions because they think they are smarter than me - they are difficult and don't last long.

My high school senior spent last night reviewing the requirements of each of his November 1 applications for college and making sure he is doing all the things necessary for admission. I'm so glad he knows that the instructions are important, that the students who do what is asked are going to be have their applications ready and available for review before the deadline. And I'm so glad he does this on his own.

He is also a very strong student in challenging classes - I know he follows directions of his teachers even when some are absurd (and of course, over the 13 years of his education, he has done some outright silly assignments).

OP's kid should learn it now, in 6th grade, that these things matter and learn how to do it before it counts.

Because that is how life functions in the real world. Substance is much more important than form. You can always fine tune things later after receiving feed back. No one cares about the color of your border on a report or study, etc. They care about what it says.

+ 1

Agree 1000%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6th grade wasn’t graded on coloring. He was graded on his border which he did not include per the directions.

which is dumb and arbitrary

It's beneficial for children to include a little bit of creativity in assignments. It exercises different parts of the brain. There's a reason many people find coloring or drawing therapeutic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6th grade wasn’t graded on coloring. He was graded on his border which he did not include per the directions.

which is dumb and arbitrary

It's beneficial for children to include a little bit of creativity in assignments. It exercises different parts of the brain. There's a reason many people find coloring or drawing therapeutic.

Be that as it may, it shouldn't be graded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6th grade wasn’t graded on coloring. He was graded on his border which he did not include per the directions.

which is dumb and arbitrary

It's beneficial for children to include a little bit of creativity in assignments. It exercises different parts of the brain. There's a reason many people find coloring or drawing therapeutic.

Be that as it may, it shouldn't be graded.

^ It adds nothing to demonstrating what you have learned.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

This story is horrible. Makes you sound awful and sadistic.

Yeah, you don't come off here well at all, college instructor!

What?! NP here. I can't believe you are advocating for changing a grade in response to a COLLEGE STUDENT who melts down when she makes a mistake.

Are you all unfamiliar with assignments? Rubrics? What planet am I living on??

This poster has given you a perfect example, wrapped in a bow, of why children should learn that details matter. Gah!

No I don't think the grade should be changed. But the college student asked to write another paper, on the correct topic this time, for partial credit and she turned her down.

I don't think she should get an A for the rewrite but maybe a C or a B which is better than a low F.

I agree with this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

Wait. Her MOM called you? Is this a thing now? I am floored that parents now think it is OK to call their child's university professors to plead for special favors (or for any reason). I would have been absolutely mortified if my parents had done this.

NP. This is off topic to this thread but since you ask, the answer is that parents feel emboldened to do this because colleges have turned parents into consumers with power. They charge such ridiculous prices for tuition and fees now. My alma mater costs 75k a year including room and board. It was under 35k when I attended 20 years ago. There is no way on earth it is truly "worth" 75k except that there are some people (about 1200 families per year) who can afford it.

When my kids are old enough to attend, it'll probably be close to 100k. You better believe I will be PISSED if I hand over 400k to a school to educate my kid and a professor pulls a stunt like the one above.

Don't charge astronomical prices and you'll get more reasonable responses. The more you charge, the more you empower people as consumers who can EASILY go elsewhere and take their money with them.

So you’d prefer that no one holds your kid accountable while they’re in college? You think it’s better if it doesn’t happen until your kid gets fired from their first job because they completely screw up projects because they didn’t pay attention to instructions? Or maybe you’ll just call your kid’s boss when you’re unhappy with your kid’s performance review.

[Anonymous]

I did not read the whole thread, but this is middle school and where your son should learn how to follow directions or fail. If he doesn't do it now, it will be worse in high school, where grades really matter. Let him figure it out on his own. I realize he has ADHD and that it will be more of an effort for him, but as a mom of an ADHD kid, I can tell you they will overcome it after a few failing marks. An IEP or 504 generally doesn't provide accommodations for not following directions on a project.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

Wait. Her MOM called you? Is this a thing now? I am floored that parents now think it is OK to call their child's university professors to plead for special favors (or for any reason). I would have been absolutely mortified if my parents had done this.

NP. This is off topic to this thread but since you ask, the answer is that parents feel emboldened to do this because colleges have turned parents into consumers with power. They charge such ridiculous prices for tuition and fees now. My alma mater costs 75k a year including room and board. It was under 35k when I attended 20 years ago. There is no way on earth it is truly "worth" 75k except that there are some people (about 1200 families per year) who can afford it.

When my kids are old enough to attend, it'll probably be close to 100k. You better believe I will be PISSED if I hand over 400k to a school to educate my kid and a professor pulls a stunt like the one above.

Don't charge astronomical prices and you'll get more reasonable responses. The more you charge, the more you empower people as consumers who can EASILY go elsewhere and take their money with them.

So you’d prefer that no one holds your kid accountable while they’re in college? You think it’s better if it doesn’t happen until your kid gets fired from their first job because they completely screw up projects because they didn’t pay attention to instructions? Or maybe you’ll just call your kid’s boss when you’re unhappy with your kid’s performance review.

No one is going to fire someone for not putting a border on a report. Come on. You're being ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

This story is horrible. Makes you sound awful and sadistic.

Yeah, you don't come off here well at all, college instructor!

What?! NP here. I can't believe you are advocating for changing a grade in response to a COLLEGE STUDENT who melts down when she makes a mistake.

Are you all unfamiliar with assignments? Rubrics? What planet am I living on??

This poster has given you a perfect example, wrapped in a bow, of why children should learn that details matter. Gah!

No I don't think the grade should be changed. But the college student asked to write another paper, on the correct topic this time, for partial credit and she turned her down.

I don't think she should get an A for the rewrite but maybe a C or a B which is better than a low F.

I agree with this.

My son is a freshman at a a selective top 15 university and he recently got a C on his Philosophy paper. He made an appointment to meet with the professor, who told him that he did not expand enough on the ideas. He gave him (and other students) the opportunity to rewrite the paper by the end of the semester for a new grade.

You sound like a horrible sadistic professor and so glad you don't teach at my son's college (not in the DC metro area of course).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

Wait. Her MOM called you? Is this a thing now? I am floored that parents now think it is OK to call their child's university professors to plead for special favors (or for any reason). I would have been absolutely mortified if my parents had done this.

NP. This is off topic to this thread but since you ask, the answer is that parents feel emboldened to do this because colleges have turned parents into consumers with power. They charge such ridiculous prices for tuition and fees now. My alma mater costs 75k a year including room and board. It was under 35k when I attended 20 years ago. There is no way on earth it is truly "worth" 75k except that there are some people (about 1200 families per year) who can afford it.

When my kids are old enough to attend, it'll probably be close to 100k. You better believe I will be PISSED if I hand over 400k to a school to educate my kid and a professor pulls a stunt like the one above.

Don't charge astronomical prices and you'll get more reasonable responses. The more you charge, the more you empower people as consumers who can EASILY go elsewhere and take their money with them.

So you’d prefer that no one holds your kid accountable while they’re in college? You think it’s better if it doesn’t happen until your kid gets fired from their first job because they completely screw up projects because they didn’t pay attention to instructions? Or maybe you’ll just call your kid’s boss when you’re unhappy with your kid’s performance review.

No one is going to fire someone for not putting a border on a report. Come on. You're being ridiculous.

Man, I’m sure PP was not talking about PUTTING A BORDER ON A WORKPLACE PROJECT. Geez, extrapolate from the information given and see the big picture here. PP is spot on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

This story is horrible. Makes you sound awful and sadistic.

Yeah, you don't come off here well at all, college instructor!

What?! NP here. I can't believe you are advocating for changing a grade in response to a COLLEGE STUDENT who melts down when she makes a mistake.

Are you all unfamiliar with assignments? Rubrics? What planet am I living on??

This poster has given you a perfect example, wrapped in a bow, of why children should learn that details matter. Gah!

No I don't think the grade should be changed. But the college student asked to write another paper, on the correct topic this time, for partial credit and she turned her down.

I don't think she should get an A for the rewrite but maybe a C or a B which is better than a low F.

I agree with this.

My son is a freshman at a a selective top 15 university and he recently got a C on his Philosophy paper. He made an appointment to meet with the professor, who told him that he did not expand enough on the ideas. He gave him (and other students) the opportunity to rewrite the paper by the end of the semester for a new grade.

You sound like a horrible sadistic professor and so glad you don't teach at my son's college (not in the DC metro area of course).

I don’t think s/he sounds like a horrible sadistic professor at all. Then again, I don’t expect the world to cater to me or my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

Wait. Her MOM called you? Is this a thing now? I am floored that parents now think it is OK to call their child's university professors to plead for special favors (or for any reason). I would have been absolutely mortified if my parents had done this.

NP. This is off topic to this thread but since you ask, the answer is that parents feel emboldened to do this because colleges have turned parents into consumers with power. They charge such ridiculous prices for tuition and fees now. My alma mater costs 75k a year including room and board. It was under 35k when I attended 20 years ago. There is no way on earth it is truly "worth" 75k except that there are some people (about 1200 families per year) who can afford it.

When my kids are old enough to attend, it'll probably be close to 100k. You better believe I will be PISSED if I hand over 400k to a school to educate my kid and a professor pulls a stunt like the one above.

Don't charge astronomical prices and you'll get more reasonable responses. The more you charge, the more you empower people as consumers who can EASILY go elsewhere and take their money with them.

So you’d prefer that no one holds your kid accountable while they’re in college? You think it’s better if it doesn’t happen until your kid gets fired from their first job because they completely screw up projects because they didn’t pay attention to instructions? Or maybe you’ll just call your kid’s boss when you’re unhappy with your kid’s performance review.

No one is going to fire someone for not putting a border on a report. Come on. You're being ridiculous.

Man, I’m sure PP was not talking about PUTTING A BORDER ON A WORKPLACE PROJECT. Geez, extrapolate from the information given and see the big picture here. PP is spot on.

That's what we're talking about though: nit pickiness. That's the TOPIC of this thread. Things that can be skimmed over the first read through and then fine tuned later.

That's how REAL LIFE works. In real life, it's rare that people are constantly holding out bullshit hoops for you to jump through like they did in school and told you were preparation for the "real world" (spoiler alert: they weren't).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

This story is horrible. Makes you sound awful and sadistic.

Yeah, you don't come off here well at all, college instructor!

What?! NP here. I can't believe you are advocating for changing a grade in response to a COLLEGE STUDENT who melts down when she makes a mistake.

Are you all unfamiliar with assignments? Rubrics? What planet am I living on??

This poster has given you a perfect example, wrapped in a bow, of why children should learn that details matter. Gah!

No I don't think the grade should be changed. But the college student asked to write another paper, on the correct topic this time, for partial credit and she turned her down.

I don't think she should get an A for the rewrite but maybe a C or a B which is better than a low F.

I agree with this.

My son is a freshman at a a selective top 15 university and he recently got a C on his Philosophy paper. He made an appointment to meet with the professor, who told him that he did not expand enough on the ideas. He gave him (and other students) the opportunity to rewrite the paper by the end of the semester for a new grade.

You sound like a horrible sadistic professor and so glad you don't teach at my son's college (not in the DC metro area of course).

I don’t think s/he sounds like a horrible sadistic professor at all. Then again, I don’t expect the world to cater to me or my kids.

If I'm giving your institution 400k, I expect you to cater to me.

Fix that problem and then maybe we'll talk.

If not, it'll only get worse, guaranteed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to learn to follow directions now.

I teach college and last year I had a student hand in an essay that completely missed the purpose of the assignments. She was a great student, had been doing very well in the course, was a lovely person but for whatever reason she just went completely off base on her final term paper. She wrote a great paper and obviously put a lot of work into it but it wasn't the paper that was assigned.

I graded using a rubric and there were parts of the rubric that I couldn't even apply to her paper. I gave her marks where I could and her final mark was around 40%.

She contacted me immediately asking to meet. She came to my office and she looked like she had been through something awful. She told me she couldn't sleep or eat, that she had never failed anything and she didn't know how to cope with this. She started sobbing in my office and it was a bit heart wrenching. I could see that she really didn't know how to cope with this. She pleaded and pleaded to let her rewrite it or to grade it differently or do a bonus assignment or anything because she couldn't accept a failing grade. I said no to all and she was honestly almost traumatized. I really think this was the most difficult thing that she had gone through (as a high achiever). I had to get her support from a friend to leave my office. Her mom called me a couple days later pleading with me to do something as her daughter was not coping well and this had impacted her mental health.

I met twice more with the student helping her to learn to cope and build resilience and never changed her mark. That would have been the easy out for me and made her happy but this was a life lesson she needed to learn and it was what was fair. She never fully understood. She did pull herself back together and did fine in my class (above the class average but lower than her usual marks). It would have been much much better for her to learn this when she was younger.

This story is horrible. Makes you sound awful and sadistic.

Yeah, you don't come off here well at all, college instructor!

What?! NP here. I can't believe you are advocating for changing a grade in response to a COLLEGE STUDENT who melts down when she makes a mistake.

Are you all unfamiliar with assignments? Rubrics? What planet am I living on??

This poster has given you a perfect example, wrapped in a bow, of why children should learn that details matter. Gah!

No I don't think the grade should be changed. But the college student asked to write another paper, on the correct topic this time, for partial credit and she turned her down.

I don't think she should get an A for the rewrite but maybe a C or a B which is better than a low F.

I agree with this.

My son is a freshman at a a selective top 15 university and he recently got a C on his Philosophy paper. He made an appointment to meet with the professor, who told him that he did not expand enough on the ideas. He gave him (and other students) the opportunity to rewrite the paper by the end of the semester for a new grade.

You sound like a horrible sadistic professor and so glad you don't teach at my son's college (not in the DC metro area of course).

I don’t think s/he sounds like a horrible sadistic professor at all. Then again, I don’t expect the world to cater to me or my kids.

Thanks Professor.