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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

This story is horrible. Makes you sound awful and sadistic.[/quote]

Yeah, you don't come off here well at all, college instructor![/quote]

I think the college professor sounds fine.  She isn't teaching kindergarten.  [/quote]

I had a student whose parents requested meetings with the Department Chair to argue a grade that I had given to the student. The student did not complete the assignment. I distributed all the assignments in the syllabus and then as a separate piece of paper on the day the project was assigned. The sheets listed, in bulleted form what font to use, what size font to use, margins, page length, number of citations and what was an acceptable citation (ie not a random blog site but a book or article that can found in the college library), and the specific assignment. The student had turned in a paper with 2 inch margins, 14 point font, no citations and did not address the questions posed.

The students F stood. And by an F I think it was 20 points out of 100 because she had summarized the two arguments that she was suppose to compare and contrast and then argue which side she thought was correct.

Students sometimes do not follow the instructions that are distributed. If I had noticed a large number of students had done the same thing, I would review the assignment and might make some changes to my rubric. The reality is that I had to do that one time in the 10 years I taught. My teaching mentors all encouraged me to include all of the assignments in the syllabus so that students had them from day one and to pass them out again when they were actually assigned. We reviewed all assignment requirements in class when I distributed them.

I never enjoyed students who were upset by their grades and who wanted their grade to be changed or the opportunity to improve their grade. The reality is if I do that for one student, I have to do it for every student. And I know that I was very clear with what was required. I always listed good days to turn in rough drafts if students wanted me to review their work. I listed the address and phone number for the writing center and encouraged students to work with the folks there. It is a free service and really helps students learn to write better.

I was the Freshman who freaked out about a grade and ended up apologizing to my Professor for my awful response and behavior, similar to the student in the story but earlier in the semester. We had a good talk about how to avoid similar mistakes and how I could recover from the assignment. I learned a lot from that exchange. But you need to learn to complete the assignment. As a student/adult with ADHD I have had my struggles. I learned how to handle those problems but it was not an easy process. Which is why I always passed out assignments in a step by step fashion AND I encouraged my students to cross off the sub questions in an essay as they answered them. [/quote]

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