<p>I’m currently a sticky (yet not too sticky situation). This is my situation:</p>
<p>Last week, I was to submit an essay in Chinese. However, from Thursday night till the rest of the weekend I was in New York visiting a sick aunt. The essay was due on Friday, so I submitted it Wednesday night.</p>
<p>However, during the time of my flight and before I could find internet access, my teacher had provided additional instructions that changed the nature of the prompt.</p>
<p>With these altered criteria, the essay I had spent a considerable amount of time finishing early (that nearly everyone else, I might add, earned an A on) earned a C because it “didn’t follow the instructions”. I had told her in advance that I would be gone during those days, so do I have grounds for arguing for a higher grade/opportunity to rewrite the essay? If so, how can I do so without being overly confrontational? Finally, is it worth antagonizing my teacher over this?</p>
<p>This is really stressing me out, so I appreciate any advice. Thanks!</p>
<p>I commend your work ethic and desire to do well, However, if the teacher changed the instructions to the class while you were absent, there isn’t much you can do about it except request (politely, and not as if you’re entitled to the consideration) the opportunity to write a new essay on the second prompt. Unfortunately, when students miss class, they miss information. It’s not the teacher’s job to track down absent students and alert them to changes in assignments. Teachers can’t judge whether one voluntary absence is more legitimate than another one; therefore the policy has to be that all absences are treated the same (the exception being, obviously, illness or hospitalization).</p>
<p>If it were my class, I’d say you have a good case. You submitted the work on time according to the instructions in effect when you turned it in. Understand that it may be hard for your teacher to assess your work in comparison to the other essays. But talk it over politely. If your teacher does not yield, ask if there’s extra work you can do to make up for the grade. If not, a C isn’t the end of the world. So move on.</p>
<p>It sounds like the assignment was given earlier in the week. As teachers WANT their students to do, you managed your time, got the assignment done, and submitted it early (which was not against the rules). AT THE LAST MINUTE, the teacher essentially completely changed the assignment WITHOUT resetting the due date. </p>
<p>Giving last minute major changes was really inconsiderate on her part since at that point she was really only giving one day to do an assignment that was supposed to be done over a period of a few days!.</p>
<p>Yes, you have a valid point. And, yes you should request that your paper be graded against the earlier criteria. </p>
<p>I’m assuming that you’re in high school. If you’re in college, the following doesn’t apply…If the teacher balks at doing anything about this, your parents need to request a meeting with this teacher. If that leads to nowhere, then your parents need to meet with the administration. This teacher needs to learn that she can’t give a major change to a time-consuming assignment within a day or so of its “due date” when students are SUPPOSED to be managing their assignments and not waiting til the last minute to complete assignments. (It really annoys me when teachers do things that are counter-productive to all that we want students to do.)</p>
<p>This teacher’s thoughtless last minute major change (without moving the “due date”) only encourages bad habits amongst students. Her action encourages students to wait until the last minute to do assignments. because who would want to put forth great effort only to have some teacher change the assignment right before it’s due.</p>
<p>^agree^ I’ll be surprised if the teacher doesn’t agree, especially since she had your essay in hand already when she changed the assignment. Good luck!</p>
<p>I suggest explaining the circumstances and asking for permission to submit a second essay in response to the revised prompt.</p>
<p>I think you might get a negative reaction if you asked the teacher to re-grade your essay on the basis of the original prompt. But your willingness to do additional work should count in your favor.</p>
<p>Although it may not seem fair, the teacher may have had good reason to change the prompt at the last minute. One possibility is that in order for students to do well in response to the original prompt, they would need to be familiar with certain material that the teacher had intended to cover before the essay was due – but that the teacher had gotten behind schedule and had not yet been able to teach that particular material. In that case, the teacher would need to revise the prompt to something that the students could answer on the basis of what had actually been taught.</p>
<p>I agree with everything Marian said above. Teachers may have many good reasons for changing an assignment at the last minute. Students who miss class take a risk that they will miss information. I’m sure the OP is a good student who will overcome this situation. Without hearing the teacher’s side of the story, it’s difficult to say what the student’s approach should be. However, generally speaking, students who miss class voluntarily are not entitled to exemptions from expectations that the other students have to meet. That is why teachers do not like to prepare packets of work for students who will be absent for family vacations, etc. The “facts on the ground” in a classroom can change, and if you’re not there, you lose out. </p>
<p>If the teacher is a reasonable person, he/she will most likely allow you to rewrite the assignment based on the new prompt if you ask politely and without a sense of presumption.</p>
<p>The larger lesson is this: when you miss class, you have to weigh the decision carefully to decide if the reason for the absence is worth the possible consequences. Sometimes the answer is yes; in which case, just take the consequences and get on with your life.</p>
<p>If you were my kiddo, I’d suggest you politely talk to the teacher, explain your circumstances and how you did your level best to meet the original assignment/time frame. Perhaps the teacher will re-consider. If not, well, I’d tell you to take the C and learn from it. You did your best in the circumstances presented and as your parent, that’s all I would ask of you.</p>
<p>I would, under no circumstances, go over the teacher’s head and pull rank as a parent over this single grade. </p>
<p>If the teacher won’t re-consider, I’d tell you to chalk it up to a life lesson: Circumstances change; deadlines get moved–up, back, whatever; criteria for the ‘project’ are sometimes fluid; one must learn to adapt and to be flexible; adjustments sometimes have to be made mid-stream AND sometimes at the very end of projects!</p>
<p>All you can do in those circumstances is do the best you can, with the resources you have, in the time you have. If you’ve done that, then you have done all you can. Life is not always fair. And neither are school assignments in high school or college.</p>
<p>At our kid’s school, if it is an excused day off, then a student is entitled to make up tests/papers. If teachers have time then homework or classroom material could be given earlier, but if not, a student could then makeup any homework assignment.</p>
<p>It is understandable you are stressed. It is hard to recover from a C, especially if it’s a major paper. I would have a discussion with your teacher first. Most teachers are quite reasonable. They are there to help you, not to penalize you. I don’t think you will antagonize the teacher if you are polite, and didn’t lie about why you were away. This is a good practice for you because you will need to deal with your professors in college someday. Often those professors are more rigid.</p>
<p>Assuming that your teacher did indeed give you a C because of failure to meet changed criteria, then your teacher is being completely unfair. I don’t care what reasons s/he may have had for changing the assignment: you completed the assignment as given and handed it in on time. You should be applauded for managing your time in such a way as to get the assignment done before leaving.</p>
<p>Any fair-minded teacher would grade you against the original criteria, especially since this was a planned absence. But before you do anything else, you need to make sure that you are being down-graded because of failure to meet the changed criteria. </p>
<p>If I were you I would request a meeting to politely discuss this. If the teacher refuses to budge, if I were your parent, I would go in and talk to the teacher. If the teacher still refused to budge, as a parent, I would take it to the head of the department, and on up the line. Pleasantly. At the very least, you should be given the opportunity to redo the essay according to the new criteria.</p>
<p>I’m not one to demand better grades from teachers or complain, but I also don’t think that injustices should be allowed to stand. If they are going to hand out grades, they should at least be fair about it.</p>
<p>The lesson this student is learning is not “If you miss class, tough luck” but, “don’t even consider doing an assignment early. The rules may change at the last minute!”</p>
<p>Any teacher who changes criteria OUGHT to give students the same amount of time to complete the new assignment as if the criteria had not been changed. Otherwise, it makes no sense at all to hand out assignments one week or more in advance.</p>
<p>My question for the student was whether she told the teacher she would be missing class and thus decided to turn the assignment early. A good teacher would give props for turning the assignment early and would take family emergencies, sickness and other defensible excuses into account.</p>
<p>This is going to sound terrible, but bear with me. It is possible that the teacher changed the criteria because of your paper.</p>
<p>It is possible that he/she read your paper and though, “Wait, this isn’t what I want all”. The he/she looks at the instructions and realizes that they were not specific enough to hit the target he/she really intended. So he/she writes new, clearer instructions.</p>
<p>Having been there, done that, I would put money on the fact that this is a teacher who is still fairly new to teaching (like within 3 years of starting) who doesn’t have it together yet. Our doctoral students do dumb things like this ALL the time.</p>
<p>From this perspective, I’d suggest you go talk to the teacher, say wow I clearly was off target for the new instructions but based on the instructions I had, was I off target? He/she will probably say that you met the original criteria but not the new one. Then offer to rewrite and split the difference (get and A on the rewrite, average with the C will at least give you a B). For a newish teacher it is important to still feel in control and save face. He/she can’t afford to let the class know that you got a free re-write. But I bet he/she feels bad about how this turned out.</p>
<p>And as for not going over his/her head, maybe not right now while your grade is in the balance, but I would rip the teacher on the evaluations for doing this. It is unprofessional and makes for a bad education.</p>
<p>There might be a cultural issue at work here. D had a foreign language teacher who came from a culture where C really WAS average. This is just the sort of thing he would have done. What we might consider reasonable and what he considered reasonable didn’t really match up. Have to say, he didn’t last very long at the school. But D’s GPA took a hit while he was there (interesting, she got As in that language when she got to college, and visited a country where it is spoken - - she said she realized she was quite fluent when she got there).</p>
<p>delicate arch may well have the right scenario. BUT that means that the teacher should have given more time to all students to complete the new assignment, and especially to the one student who turned the original one ahead of time and had told the teacher that she would be away.</p>
<p>By the way, not everybody brings a laptop everywhere they travel!</p>
<p>Yes, it is perfectly reasonable to ask for a chance to re-write on the new topic–or a second grading on the old one.</p>
<p>Maybe the teacher didn’t remember that you turned in the paper early and that you were gone when she changed the prompt. (Are you sure there were not some other instructions that you didn’t follow?)</p>
<p>Politely remind your teacher about your situation-- I think she will understand.<br>
Teachers sometimes make mistakes and forget things, especially when grading a big stack of papers. . .</p>
<p>Just be polite. I hope it works out. Good luck</p>
<p>Any teacher who would do the above has no business in education. </p>
<p>Any teacher who receives a completed assignment early and then realizes that her own RUBRIC was shoddy or ambiguous or incomplete, needs to bring it to everyone’s attention, and allow adequate extra time for the students to do it (redo it) correctly - especially the poor student who turned the work in early.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>If this is a public high school teacher, would there ever be such evaluations? Not where I come from.</p>