Under the policy, teachers must pursue students to arrange for late assignments to be completed. If the student doesn’t turn in enough work for the teacher to assess progress, the teacher should enter “unable to evaluate,” the policy says.
After several warnings from the principal, Dorval attended a hearing May 15 with officials from the school and Edmonton Public Schools, including the district superintendent. On May 18, Dorval got a letter informing him he is suspended indefinitely.
The guy deserves to get suspended. If you actually read the article, the school district policy is not that stupid, but this guy is.
On June 03 2012 08:04 Sumahi wrote: At first I was shocked to hear about a "no-zero" policy, but now I understand it more. I teach college and I would never want to see something like this implemented there since it puts too much emphasis on the teacher forcing students to do the work when college should be about students learning to do their work and motivate themselves. I guess for high school it would be a gray area since they should be learning the real consequences of life, but also may need some additional guidance and motivation.
I worked in the education sector for 5 years. This teacher absolutely deserved to be suspended for insubordination. If your boss tells you not to do something then you cant keep on doing it just because you think that your boss is wrong. I do not agree with the no-zero policy, but the teacher should of worked with his colleagues to get the policy changed.
As for the small number of people in this thread who think that they should be able to get an A without putting any work in: that is not how the world works. At some point, you will find yourself in a position where success requires hard work, so young people should be made to learn how to work hard (completely assignments on time, for example).
Ridiculous. Its dumb how they try to make it easier and easier for kids in highschool and below to get good grades. You can't expect good marks unless you put in the effort. And it should always be that way.
On June 03 2012 08:16 hzflank wrote: I worked in the education sector for 5 years. ... should of .
So you're why the education system has declined in quality.
I said I worked in the sector, I did not say that I was an educator
Although your comment will probably bug me now. I have spent the last two years in an area with a horrendously bad local dialect, and if I stay longer it could get a lot worse than 'should of'
Also find the silly "smart students shouldn't get penalized for not doing homework" funny. And since plenty of people raised a lot of good, serious points, I'll just add this:
You are presented with the syllabus and are warned about how heavily HW weighs into the final grade. If you failed to follow those instructions and complain about low grade you are either: 1. Not all that smart (if you couldnt figure out the consequences) 2. Lazy (if you chose not to do HW knowing the consequences) Either way, you dont deserve that easy A. And I've also had that mentality till i grew up a bit. I was very #2.
On topic, while I'm also not digging the policy itself, the teacher should have been suspended for not following set guidelines.
On June 03 2012 08:38 zev318 wrote: i had an accounting teacher give me a final mark of 1 because i never went to class. i think he was trolling me with it.
well, the teacher is basically under a contract from the school, he is getting paid by them so he has to follow their rules. It's their institution, if he doesn't like it he can go teach somewhere else. I know the job market is tough these days, but if they already have a system in place for "not completed" work, then that's what he should go by and shouldn't risk losing his job. I don't think it's right, but he IS their employee and they are HIS bosses.
but if you don't like what the school is doing, then don't send your kids there, don't go to school there. This is america, we have the right to decide what school we go to, use that right.
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. After all, when I'm looking for a job, my grades should show how good I am at said thing, not how nice I was in class. Just because I didn't come to every English class doesn't mean I wont come to work every day. 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...
I had practically 0 attendance in highschool and very little at uni (basically I only attended courses where prof would make me feel genuinely interested throughout the class). While in highschool it wasn't a big deal as I didn't need good grades for anything (all I needed was to pass from year to year) as back then universities had their own internal exams and completely disregarded your highschool performance (which I find reasonable as stuff you lear in HS has very little if anything to do with what you learn at UNI), in uni I had to put a bit more effort. Usually I just went to the person responsible for classes/courses and made some sorry excuse why I won't be attending most of them and asked what do I need to do to pass it. Most of the time it required learning stuff yourself and handing in some essays or answering some tough questions, which I did gladly as learning myself was way more interesting than some boring courses.
On June 03 2012 08:46 emc wrote: well, the teacher is basically under a contract from the school, he is getting paid by them so he has to follow their rules. It's their institution, if he doesn't like it he can go teach somewhere else. I know the job market is tough these days, but if they already have a system in place for "not completed" work, then that's what he should go by and shouldn't risk losing his job. I don't think it's right, but he IS their employee and they are HIS bosses.
He probably deliberately got himself suspended to bring attention to the issue.
Please do not derail this topic into other inflammatory discussions. The discussion should be focused on whether zeros should be given out if students fail to hand in work.
This debate has nothing to do with giving zeros, this debate is about the freedom of teachers to make decisions in their classroom independent of the school. By the way, I absolutely support teachers in this but this is about school policy vs. teaching practice and has nothing to do with zeros. Don't try to turn this into a debate about more than what it is.
He was not trying to make his own decisions he was doing what is right for the kids. He wasn't trying to create a precedent where teachers can start doing their own shit/ In fact, I have never heard or even seen teachers tried to ignore policies and act on their own.
He gave zeros because the school policy was inherently flawed to begin with. All teachers follow school/board policies at all times except when something like this is so ridiculously wrong to do, changes must be made "wake up" the students from their inexcusable lack of responsibility and work ethnic.
There are ups and downs to giving zeros for missing work. I come from a high school where if you had even one piece of missing work you didn't get a 0, you failed the class. I'm not gonna argue what is better, but this teacher did make his own unilateral decision. Because you rephrase it as "doing what is right for the kids" doesn't change what it is.
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.
What a horrifying concept: you can only make decisions for yourself when we know you will make the decisions we want you to make. edit: Another important thing to remember about education numbers in the United States: The US has mandatory high school. Many nations such as, to name one at random, switzerland, do not. This means we do have a lower quality pool of graduates overall, but more graduates and overall a comparable pool of education in the public.
EPT
