""The physics teacher with 35 years experience said he continued giving zeros when students failed to hand in assignments, instead of using behaviour codes such as “not completed,” which the school requires under its grading and reporting practice."
/thread?
Whether being allowed to give zeros should be reinstated or not, the teacher has grading practices he must follow that he did not. The real question to me is what message you'd send your students when this teacher also doesn't follow his requirements but gets away with it. Writing your own grading scheme in a syllabus is not acceptable if they differ from those of the school, unless you have run your new grading scheme by the school's admin ahead of time (and they accept it). He clearly did not. I don't care if he's right or wrong frankly, if he was supposed to use NC's or other behaviour codes rather than giving a zero, and he gave the zero anyways, it proves he cares more about his principles than his job requirements. I respect that, but ultimately the working world doesn't function like that, and he deserves to have his job suspended.
I think this sends the absolute correct message- your values/principles don't mean shit at your job. This is pretty much always true in the workplace, and at least the kids get to learn that lesson now
On June 03 2012 03:05 Faveokatro wrote: ^ This. The "I'm too smart/knowledgeable I don't need to do homework" never made sense to me. If it was that easy for you, the assignment would take almost no time, right? I don't understand where this attitude comes from, I was taking multi-variable calc in middle school and guess what. I still did my homework. I wasn't special and you certainly aren't special for earning a B on an English test. Are you joking? That isn't even that good.
As pointed out by others, the most common excuses of "my teacher sucks" or "my teacher is an asshole" are equally irrelevant. You'll have shitty professors, you'll have shitty bosses, you'll deal with a LOT of crappy coworkers in your life. The value you bring isn't solely in the quality of work you produce - even more solitary/quantifiable work like research is now very team-based. You need to learn how to tolerate and make the best of situations with people you don't like. Since you seem to think that those rules don't apply to when you enter "the real world," let me assure you that that isn't the case. Even as a personal trainer, you have bosses. Many of them. They're called clients.
Uh what. Easy things can be very time consuming. And when it's easy and time consuming, it's tedious.
Typical exaggeration. Care to give an actual example of an assignment your teacher gave which was A) Easy B) Time-consuming and C) Didn't help reinforce your understanding of the concepts?
STA 392: Engineering statistics
Homework was due aprox every 1.5 weeks, consisting of ~30-40 problems.
This class was also knows by fellow students as "how to use the probability functions on your TI calculator".
10-20 problems would have served to test us on this ability very easily. Furthermore, only ~10 problems were graded, the rest were taken on a +1 if you did it, +0 if you didn't - not even checking if the answer was right.
Mr. Dorval (the teacher in question) was my grade 11 physics teacher. He takes his role as an educator pretty seriously. Most people here in Edmonton support him.
On June 03 2012 03:05 Faveokatro wrote: ^ This. The "I'm too smart/knowledgeable I don't need to do homework" never made sense to me. If it was that easy for you, the assignment would take almost no time, right? I don't understand where this attitude comes from, I was taking multi-variable calc in middle school and guess what. I still did my homework. I wasn't special and you certainly aren't special for earning a B on an English test. Are you joking? That isn't even that good.
As pointed out by others, the most common excuses of "my teacher sucks" or "my teacher is an asshole" are equally irrelevant. You'll have shitty professors, you'll have shitty bosses, you'll deal with a LOT of crappy coworkers in your life. The value you bring isn't solely in the quality of work you produce - even more solitary/quantifiable work like research is now very team-based. You need to learn how to tolerate and make the best of situations with people you don't like. Since you seem to think that those rules don't apply to when you enter "the real world," let me assure you that that isn't the case. Even as a personal trainer, you have bosses. Many of them. They're called clients.
Uh what. Easy things can be very time consuming. And when it's easy and time consuming, it's tedious.
Typical exaggeration. Care to give an actual example of an assignment your teacher gave which was A) Easy B) Time-consuming and C) Didn't help reinforce your understanding of the concepts?
STA 392: Engineering statistics
Homework was due aprox every 1.5 weeks, consisting of ~30-40 problems.
This class was also knows by fellow students as "how to use the probability functions on your TI calculator".
10-20 problems would have served to test us on this ability very easily. Furthermore, only ~10 problems were graded, the rest were taken on a +1 if you did it, +0 if you didn't - not even checking if the answer was right.
That's 5 easy (you said it was easy) problems a day that probably takes you the same amount of time it takes to wash the dishes and it doesn't even matter if you are right or wrong.
On June 03 2012 04:30 SiguR wrote: Mr. Dorval was my grade 11 physics teacher. He takes his role as an educator pretty seriously. Most people here in Edmonton support him.
Wait this is 11/12th year physics? You've gotta be joking.
In my final year, I think I was doing about 4 hours of homework a day, and 5-8 hours on holidays in my final year. And that was only slightly more than everyone else, its not like I was used to it either, in prior years (before year 11) I barely did any homework, I basically gave up everything that year so I could do well.
And these kids can't even hand in homework when they are given multiple chances and its impossible to get a 0. WTF?
On June 03 2012 03:05 Faveokatro wrote: ^ This. The "I'm too smart/knowledgeable I don't need to do homework" never made sense to me. If it was that easy for you, the assignment would take almost no time, right? I don't understand where this attitude comes from, I was taking multi-variable calc in middle school and guess what. I still did my homework. I wasn't special and you certainly aren't special for earning a B on an English test. Are you joking? That isn't even that good.
As pointed out by others, the most common excuses of "my teacher sucks" or "my teacher is an asshole" are equally irrelevant. You'll have shitty professors, you'll have shitty bosses, you'll deal with a LOT of crappy coworkers in your life. The value you bring isn't solely in the quality of work you produce - even more solitary/quantifiable work like research is now very team-based. You need to learn how to tolerate and make the best of situations with people you don't like. Since you seem to think that those rules don't apply to when you enter "the real world," let me assure you that that isn't the case. Even as a personal trainer, you have bosses. Many of them. They're called clients.
Uh what. Easy things can be very time consuming. And when it's easy and time consuming, it's tedious.
Typical exaggeration. Care to give an actual example of an assignment your teacher gave which was A) Easy B) Time-consuming and C) Didn't help reinforce your understanding of the concepts?
STA 392: Engineering statistics
Homework was due aprox every 1.5 weeks, consisting of ~30-40 problems.
This class was also knows by fellow students as "how to use the probability functions on your TI calculator".
10-20 problems would have served to test us on this ability very easily. Furthermore, only ~10 problems were graded, the rest were taken on a +1 if you did it, +0 if you didn't - not even checking if the answer was right.
So... you have to do 3-4 easy, plug-in-to-your-calculator questions a day. OH THE HUMANITY. And considering the necessity of very low error margins in almost every type of engineering, drilling you until you can do the questions without conscious thought is actually valuable.
I 100% agree with the teacher. While stuff like curriculum should be standardized, the ability of a teacher to give zero's is absolutely necessary. If a student never actually did an assignment should he get credit? More so in the real world, anything less than a 90% grade on a lot of things can cost you dearly. While I agree that the school is correct that NC can be used for the short term(up to 2 weeks), anything more than that and a 0 can and should be assigned and the onus is on the student to care enough to make up work to get those marks back.
On June 03 2012 03:15 micronesia wrote: There are a few issues here.
The first is that the teacher was insubordinate. The school's decision that teachers shouldn't given zeroes might be good, or it might be the dumbest idea ever. They made their decision, either way. They told the teacher not to give zeroes. He gave zeroes. That's insubordination.
The sad thing is how often this seems to happen in public schools. The board of education or administration comes up with rules and mandates for the teacher to follow that completely undermine instruction and are horribly counter productive, and the teachers are powerless to do anything about it. Sometimes teacher tenure helps to alleviating some of this, but the teacher in the OP has been teaching for over 30 years so seniority isn't necessarily enough to combat this issue.
The second issue is the policy to not give zeroes. As Trezeguet pointed out, giving zeroes is not always the right thing to do. It's not about giving kids free points. The first thing to consider is how arbitrary our 100 point scale is, as well as the cutoffs for mastery, passing, failing, etc.. The second thing to consider is that some grading systems have been found (through significant amounts of research) to have more of an overall positive effect on student learning than others. Giving a kid who doesn't complete some work early in the year zeroes with no chance to earn back some of the credit maybe be perfectly fair, but it could also guarantee that the kid will fail the class for the rest of the year. Not only will he be less likely to get his act together and try to bring his average up from <40% to >70% (versus <60% on a less brutal grading scheme), but he will be more likely to be a disruption in class which will negatively impact other learners since he's not learning himself. Grading schemes that punish students to teach them a lesson don't necessarily teach students a lesson.
On June 03 2012 03:14 nennx wrote: Honestly, you'd have to try fail a class. I can't believe we're having this discussion. If you fail a class, its because you 100% fucked up and its 100% your fault, its not the teachers fault. Every teacher lets you make up tests if they know before hand and you have a REAL excuse, and same goes for turning in homework (you can turn things in early, you know). This is a dumb discussion, if you're not willing to give someone a zero because they missed something, you aren't being a good/responsible teacher. Period.
This type of attitude as an educator results in a less educated general public.
Putting 'period' at the end of a post on tl seems to correlate strongly with someone who is very firm in their beliefs without any evidence to back them up.
If the kid fails he fails. You have to understand people are responsible and accountable for their own actions. If we have given them many chances to complete their work and yet they still fail to do so. What more leniency can you give? All you going to accomplish is producing big babies that are incompetent, inadequately educated, no work ethic, no sense of responsibility and accountability who will never be ready for the reality of the work force.
The western educational system has become so lenient to the point where it is guaranteed to produce failures in society. I cannot put it any better than Michio Kaku who specifically discussed this issue of "lower quality graduates" in America.
The problem with people who don't do their work is that they think education is not important. They get influenced by all the shit on TV everyday, think they can become rich and shit by doing nothing in school. Education prepares you for life's paths. There are many paths to take, if you are not interested in calculus you can take it for the prerequisite then never take it again in the future. But some stuff in life are always connected and they require basic understandings of physics/chemistry/calculus. I had the same mentality back in high school that why bother learning this shit, never gonna use it again. But as I grew up I realized the benefit of learning those subject even though the majority of them did not come to use in real life.
IMO, freedom of choice comes after a person has been well educated because by then they are competent enough and intelligent enough to make the right choices.
On June 03 2012 03:05 Faveokatro wrote: ^ This. The "I'm too smart/knowledgeable I don't need to do homework" never made sense to me. If it was that easy for you, the assignment would take almost no time, right? I don't understand where this attitude comes from, I was taking multi-variable calc in middle school and guess what. I still did my homework. I wasn't special and you certainly aren't special for earning a B on an English test. Are you joking? That isn't even that good.
As pointed out by others, the most common excuses of "my teacher sucks" or "my teacher is an asshole" are equally irrelevant. You'll have shitty professors, you'll have shitty bosses, you'll deal with a LOT of crappy coworkers in your life. The value you bring isn't solely in the quality of work you produce - even more solitary/quantifiable work like research is now very team-based. You need to learn how to tolerate and make the best of situations with people you don't like. Since you seem to think that those rules don't apply to when you enter "the real world," let me assure you that that isn't the case. Even as a personal trainer, you have bosses. Many of them. They're called clients.
Uh what. Easy things can be very time consuming. And when it's easy and time consuming, it's tedious.
Typical exaggeration. Care to give an actual example of an assignment your teacher gave which was A) Easy B) Time-consuming and C) Didn't help reinforce your understanding of the concepts?
STA 392: Engineering statistics
Homework was due aprox every 1.5 weeks, consisting of ~30-40 problems.
This class was also knows by fellow students as "how to use the probability functions on your TI calculator".
10-20 problems would have served to test us on this ability very easily. Furthermore, only ~10 problems were graded, the rest were taken on a +1 if you did it, +0 if you didn't - not even checking if the answer was right.
So... you have to do 3-4 easy, plug-in-to-your-calculator questions a day. OH THE HUMANITY. And considering the necessity of very low error margins in almost every type of engineering, drilling you until you can do the questions without conscious thought is actually valuable.
He asked for something that was: time consuming, easy, redundant
That homework qualified for all 3.
Also, it takes significant amounts of time to put data sets into lists for the functions to operate on.
Not to mention when something pulls this shit: p.8.4: using the data set from p.3.27 p.3.27: using the data set from p.1.52
Really stupid. You don't hand in assignments, you get 0. That's how it works. Don't be a lazy fuck and do your work or quit school and go work as a janitor.
The kids don't get "a zero". But they don't pass the course either. It says right in the article.
If the work still isn’t done, a student might have to retake the class or find alternate ways to show they know the material, Schmidt said.
The only issue here is the teacher is not allowed to put the number "0". They can put any other wording like "incomplete" or "unable to evaluate", etc. The kid still fails the course.
The teacher instead thinks he's some kind of high and mighty leader of the young and will institute his own rules and methods to teach them. Sorry bro, if you want to do that, find a private school or someone who'll allow you.
On June 03 2012 03:05 Faveokatro wrote: ^ This. The "I'm too smart/knowledgeable I don't need to do homework" never made sense to me. If it was that easy for you, the assignment would take almost no time, right? I don't understand where this attitude comes from, I was taking multi-variable calc in middle school and guess what. I still did my homework. I wasn't special and you certainly aren't special for earning a B on an English test. Are you joking? That isn't even that good.
As pointed out by others, the most common excuses of "my teacher sucks" or "my teacher is an asshole" are equally irrelevant. You'll have shitty professors, you'll have shitty bosses, you'll deal with a LOT of crappy coworkers in your life. The value you bring isn't solely in the quality of work you produce - even more solitary/quantifiable work like research is now very team-based. You need to learn how to tolerate and make the best of situations with people you don't like. Since you seem to think that those rules don't apply to when you enter "the real world," let me assure you that that isn't the case. Even as a personal trainer, you have bosses. Many of them. They're called clients.
Uh what. Easy things can be very time consuming. And when it's easy and time consuming, it's tedious.
Typical exaggeration. Care to give an actual example of an assignment your teacher gave which was A) Easy B) Time-consuming and C) Didn't help reinforce your understanding of the concepts?
STA 392: Engineering statistics
Homework was due aprox every 1.5 weeks, consisting of ~30-40 problems.
This class was also knows by fellow students as "how to use the probability functions on your TI calculator".
10-20 problems would have served to test us on this ability very easily. Furthermore, only ~10 problems were graded, the rest were taken on a +1 if you did it, +0 if you didn't - not even checking if the answer was right.
So... you have to do 3-4 easy, plug-in-to-your-calculator questions a day. OH THE HUMANITY. And considering the necessity of very low error margins in almost every type of engineering, drilling you until you can do the questions without conscious thought is actually valuable.
He asked for something that was: time consuming, easy, redundant
That homework qualified for all 3.
Also, it takes significant amounts of time to put data sets into lists for the functions to operate on.
Not to mention when something pulls this shit: p.8.4: using the data set from p.3.27 p.3.27: using the data set from p.1.52
You're talking to someone who took higher level statistics. 1) It's not that time consuming. I may hate Minitab, but it's not hard to use. 2) It's not redundant, the point is that you drill it in as second nature. And you still only have 3-4 a day. 20 minutes tops.
I fail to see why the second part is "shit". If putting the data sets into lists is the most time-consuming part for you, shouldn't you be happy they're sharing data sets? :boggle:
On June 03 2012 01:47 sereniity wrote: As I go to school myself I find this a very interesting subject, a question I often bring up is "Are your grades a reflection of your knowledge/skill, or your work put into the class?"
Basically, I feel that even if my english is good enough for grade A, I cannot achieve it unless I come to almost every class and do every piece of homework, even if I get very high scores on my tests. Is this right or wrong?
In my own perfect world, a grade would reflect how a good a certain student is at said subject, not how much time dedicated into it. I know a guy in my english class who is terrible at english, yet he's given grade C. The only reason for that is because he did his homework and was nice to the teacher.
Me on the other hand, had a grudge with the teacher (along with the rest of the class) and I've been having constant meetings with the principal to get ourselves a new teacher (she has a terrible attitude and constantly mocks us, has an aura of prestige as if we're crap and she's the best, yet she can't even spell the word boulder).
Anyway, back on topic, I'm getting an E this year because I basically haven't come to many of her lessons (I have about 60% attendance rate). I did however get a B on my final exams (called 'Nationella Proven' in Sweden).
Maybe this was abit off-topic, I got abit carried away :D...
totally disagree with you
you're saying that intelligence should be your mark and effort should be less of it. come on now, how successful you are at a certain job is determined by your quality of work. i don't give a shit if you are extremely smart, if that average kid puts out a better product than you he's doing better than you.
if you're extremely knowledgeable you should be doing better than the average kid if you are putting out the same effort. it sounds like homework still accounts for a chunk of your mark and that is dragging you down. why don't you just.. iunno.. do it if it's that easy. everyone has to do monotonous tasks, that's the effort part of it.
If you are acing every test without studying for them, I hardly think it should matter much whether you wrote that retarded pretend diary your english teacher wanted you to write for class.
If you are told that the diary is part of your grade, then you'd better do it if you want a good grade. If it's not graded, then you're right.
But that's stupid, because what matters is how good I am at English not whether I proved it by repeating an inane task 50 times to get a pat on the head.
Yeah, I never liked school much....
FINALLY! Someone with the same viewpoint as I regarding school. I'm so glad I'm not alone .
To reiterate what several have said, I think that grades should reflect the knowledge you have in said subject, not whether or not you did some irrelevant essay or homework assignment. I've gotten D's or F's in classes which I got A's or B's on all the tests but failed the class because I didn't do anything else (even now as a college student I do this, which has set me back 3 semesters). Now some people would say that I wouldn't be a very good employee because of my laziness or whatever you want to call it, but I don't think you should assume ones academic "behaviors" are going to translate over to their job.
Nothing good can come from a society that slacks in it's Education for the sake of accommodating the lazy and inept. The fact that this is a topic that has came up by a School Board seems to be a fair indicator of what to expect in the future due to such.
I'am not sure about you or me. But I really don't want any of those students being my Doctor or Accountant or for that matter anything else that could cause me harm. I don't feel comfortable with the idea that they might have just coasted by to make a School look better so they could feel better about themselves. Feeling good about themselves doesn't help when they do something wrong and end up screwing up something important.
For all its worth schools are a failed model of building people up
They fail both on making people learn how to interact socially and on teaching kids how to create the habit of studying at home
They should put schools in the hands of psychologists, with a focus totally on identifiying problems and dealing with them, and giving these kids the tools to excell at life in any area possible
Asking 13 year olds to make homework and get good grades in arbitrary tests is only gonna get in the way of that.
And serious learning should be left for late highschool.
If the work still isn’t done, a student might have to retake the class or find alternate ways to show they know the material, Schmidt said.
The only issue here is the teacher is not allowed to put the number "0". They can put any other wording like "incomplete" or "unable to evaluate", etc. The kid still fails the course.
The teacher instead thinks he's some kind of high and mighty leader of the young and will institute his own rules and methods to teach them. Sorry bro, if you want to do that, find a private school or someone who'll allow you.
If I was the teacher, when I'd come back from suspension, I'd start giving them a grade of "one" instead of zero. If a zero is so bad because it hurts your self esteem, I'd love to see the school board's reaction if instead teachers just gave people a grade of one instead. Would they start have to ban grades of one then? Or 50s? Where would it end? What are we willing to do to help protect little Timmy's self-esteem.
EPT
.
