Ethical Quesion

[Spacy]

Student of mine was given a project on Monday (4 days ago).  Was told that they would have 3 days in class (1 hour periods), plus half a day on Friday to work on the project.  Project should take between 1.5 and 2 hours to complete for an average student.  Project requires a computer (they are making a mini-web page on Adobe Spark - free app and very user friendly).  Said student goofed off every day - and every day was reminded that the project was due on Friday at 24:00 (I have my own deadlines for grades and such due to end of school year being next week).  Today, they send me an email (about 20:30 my time) saying "Grandma won't let me use her computer.  I cannot get the project done!  Please excuse me from the project!"  Note: not asking for extra time, or help to get computer access, just excuse from the project.

If I give her a grade below 30%, she fails the course and will have to redo Physics over summer school.  Admin will be all up my ass if I do so, even if I have more than enough documentation to justify.  Could be to the extent that they won't renew my contract this August.

This girl will never, ever, in her life use physics.  Her mentality is such that she will likely become a hair stylist or other, similar, profession. 

Thunks? 

Note - I have had similar issues each and every year I have taught.  I HAVE lost a job over this exact same issue, although they came up with other reasons to justify their actions, it was obviously because I failed those who deserved to fail.  Other times I have let them pass, particularly when it was obvious that the content I was teaching them wasn't really important for the remainder of their life.  Can anybody here remember how to do Molar / Gram conversions, or how about how long a guitar string must be in order to achieve a certain velocity on the 1st harmonic, or even something more basic such as what the slope of a line represents in a velocity-distance diagram?

[Buster's Uncle]

Lori does...


-Maybe what you need is to give her a chance to do twice as much to keep from failing.

[Lorizael]

If it's still technically possible for you to accept the project, I'd say let her turn it in late with a severe penalty (but not so severe that she can't pass) and remind her that the project is worth x% of her grade. That said, I have no teaching experience whatsoever.

[Rusty Edge]

In the big scheme of things it probably isn't worth the stress to everyone to give her what she deserves. At this date, I'm assuming school is over, no time for forced extra credit work.

I think I'd give her some kind of self-help/ time management book as a gift, and tell her you know she won't need physics for the rest of her life, but what she doesn't know is that she will need what's in the book, and let her pass.

I had some incompletes in physics, mostly lab reports that got as far as calculations. Some of that was me. A lot of it was ridiculous scheduling and working 7 hours a day , 6 days a week besides and mostly sleeping on Sundays. The teacher passed me, but I didn't deserve it. It came as a surprise to me, although my test grades were good. I didn't go to college, so a lot of it I didn't need, and forgot.

It was good to understand relativity, and how spectrographic analysis works, and acoustical terms for when I started to lose my hearing and had to see an audiologist and shop for hearing aids.
Doppler effect was another.

Mostly what mattered in the decades since were mass, acceleration, and simple machines, AND ELECTRICITY.

[Unorthodox]

Can anybody here remember how to do Molar / Gram conversions, or how about how long a guitar string must be in order to achieve a certain velocity on the 1st harmonic, or even something more basic such as what the slope of a line represents in a velocity-distance diagram?

I could jog my memory easy enough. 

More time maybe, not excused IMO. 

Though my job mostly entails making sure da rules be followed and applied evenly, so maybe not your best source. 

[Lord Avalon]

You should flunk her, but your contract might not be renewed because you did your job?! That's effed up, man.

[Rusty Edge]

In the interest of full disclosure, I got let go from a company for being more ethical than my boss.

Spacy has been down that road before, too. Doing it again could be a bad career move. More stress for everybody than it's probably worth.

[Spacy]

You should flunk her, but your contract might not be renewed because you did your job?! That's effed up, man.

Welcome to the world of K-12 education in the US of A.

[Spacy]

Gave an extension: She has until midnight saturday to email it to me (I actually gave the extension to every student). Most had already handed it in, so it will not mess up too much of my grading (I am required to have everything in by 7am monday morning so kids showing up for their final exams know what they have walking in).

Today, though, instead of using her time in class with a computer to work, she kept playing music videos on YouTube. I told her 6 times that she needs to stop the videos and work, but she just gave me the brush off. Of course, if I were to take the computer away, it would be my fault for not giving her every opportunity - so I let her play her music and sing along.....

50/50 if she will do it, and do it well enough to let me pass her.

[Lord Avalon]

Welcome to the world of K-12 education in the US of A.

Back in my day, kids weren't coddled.

[Lorizael]

Today, though, instead of using her time in class with a computer to work, she kept playing music videos on YouTube. I told her 6 times that she needs to stop the videos and work, but she just gave me the brush off. Of course, if I were to take the computer away, it would be my fault for not giving her every opportunity - so I let her play her music and sing along.....

Ugh. She might not need to know any physics for the rest of her life, but she sure could learn that sometimes in life you have to do things you don't want to do.

[Valka]

You actually let students play around on YouTube instead of doing their classwork? Why?

I really don't get this modern "every kid is a special snowflake" crap. I've paid the price academically when assignments weren't done. In Grade 7 one of my science report card marks was 10/100... because I'd gotten a zero on the insect collection assignment. I'd made a deliberate decision not to do that, because I really couldn't see the point of it. It just screamed "UNETHICAL!!!" to me, and back in 1974 we didn't have the right to opt out of killing animals for biology assignments.

I made the grade up later, of course, on assignments that didn't require gassing grasshoppers and sticking pins through their bodies.


Just a few years ago, a high school teacher got fired for giving out zeroes for work not handed in. He was also a science teacher. After a long, tough court battle he was finally awarded back pay and damages, and his job back. But he decided to retire from teaching instead, and who can really blame him? It's a shame, because his other students and most of his colleagues really stuck by him.

[Unorthodox]

You actually let students play around on YouTube instead of doing their classwork? Why?

You'd think the school would have a decent filter that blocked all such things. 

[Rusty Edge]

You actually let students play around on YouTube instead of doing their classwork? Why?

You'd think the school would have a decent filter that blocked all such things.

Yeah I would, too!

But to be fair, I also was naïve enough to think that when I worked for an insurance division of a mega-bank, the internal e-mail would have had an impenetrable firewall protecting it from outside e-mails. Not the case... I got SPAM addressed to one of several other people with the same 1st and last name. Of course they were notoriously hacked afterwards.
WELL, Saying my old company was bad was too FAR to GO,
because I really enjoyed working with other teams within the system because they were courteous and competent, the benefits were good, but there were a couple of layers of middle management between my boss and the VPs who were entirely bonus driven, rather than logical. Always changing priorities between doing things well, fast, and cheap.

[Spacy]

YouTube is specifically not blocked as there is a decent amount of education stuff on it.   A lot of teachers also have kids do video projects and post them to YouTube.   

And, I would get minimal support from admin that would back me on the no-youtube, until, that is, the kid said something like "well, we will see what my mom has to say about this!".  At that point, admin, not wanting conflict with the adults who put the kid in the school in the first place would change their support and the teacher would be wrong.... I have seen it in the public schools I did all my student teaching at, along with the charters I have worked at.

Trust me; k-12 ed is broken here in the US.