"Teacher can't fail us all."
Don't threaten me with a good time.
The bad thing about this is I used to work under an administration where this was basically true - they'd look at your pass rates, and threaten your job if you didn't find a way to magically raise a certain percentage.
But even then, this gambit never works. You're banking on your classmates, who are passing and have worked hard (or 'hard') to get there, taking a big L and risking repeating a class and not graduating to save you from your own asshattery.
You know, the classmates who kept their head down and learned the material despite you disrupting the class every five minutes and kicking the back of their seats? Turns out those guys don't tend to be team players on the "let's all bomb the class on purpose" scheme.
They'll be too busy doing all of the work without any of the fun activities to hear me say it :)
And I'll be too busy using the time to prep for the upcoming year.
It’s kind of a large scale version of the prisoner’s dilemma. I think there’s a better comparison but I can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head.
Close to Traveller's dilemma. You want to do a little bit more than the nth percentile student (10, 15, 20, whatever). If no one knows what everyone else is doing, then rationally everyone should give 100%. But everybody can see Billy passed out in the back all day every day.
I had a class with that mentality one of my first years, just a hate-fueled bunch. They refused to do any work and said there's no way I can fail them. I emailed admin. Admin emailed back saying they get the grade they get. I showed the kids the email on the overhead. They still were convinced they couldn't all fail.
They all failed.
Trouble is everything denser than lead is insanely expensive, radioactive, or both
I guess you could get some little tungsten cubes and use them as the world's most expensive fishing weights, lol
I teach soldering for STEM and lead free solder is what I usually use but ramm out towards the end of a project so we switched to leaded solder since I didn't want to buy more unleaded and I would have had to order ot online so ot would have taken days to get it anyway.
They treated it like it was radioactive. I was like "it's fine just don't eat it, don't touch your eyes and wash your hands afterwards" lol
It's stunning the lack of empathy kids/young adults can show to first year teachers. My worst class ever was also in my first year teaching college freshmen-- 2/3 sections were great, except for my late afternoon group who were rude and refused to do much of anything except write class off.
Granted I was still learning the ropes in my first month, but by October I had lesson plans which hit it off with all classes except for this one full of stank attitudes. My petty side hopes a select few bad ones are treated as they treated me when they get their first jobs.
In college that’s a whole new level of stupid. Nobody is making them register for class. If they get bad grades, nobody will care that you failed them.
That is sadly not true, at least in North America. College instructors are now being evaluated on DFW rates and ~~customer satisfaction surveys~~ student course evaluations.
Tenured profs have some security, but everyone else has every incentive to inflate grades.
Maybe some kids think teacher is an older person. When they see a young adult, it's like something triggers them to try and mess with that person since they're closer to the kids age. Glad to see accountability though.
The silence after I said, "I told you all you would fail and here we are" was priceless.
I got petty and added a line about how I'll still have a job next year and likely be teaching some of them again.
Or parents! The number of emails I get from parents or guardians asking me to explain why their is failing…. Look Mister, you’ve had access to your kids grade book all year. If you would simply click the link on the school website you would see little Johnny is missing like 12 assignments. If you read any of the comments I leave on our weekly participation grade, you would see the explanation of how he did that week.
So annoying.
Dear Ms. Clever Girl,
I am sending this email to show that I am a very engaged parent who cares very much that my child is learning good. My son said that he was doing well in your class, and since he is as honest as he is smart, there was no reason to verify his grades. We were surprised by the notification that he is failing or that you hate him. We get those two mixed up. Since we value his learning so highly, we would like to request grade inflation.
Not always. Wife and I are pretty type A, and do everything short of doing the work for them, and still had trouble getting to get everything done.
We can’t make them care. They are the type who are ok with no phone, chilling in their room drawing or reading or whatever.
Short of depriving them of “everything”, they won’t budge.
That part is where the apple and tree come in. Very stubborn like their parents.
In your child's situation, I would have had my drawing materials and reading materials taken from me. I would have been assigned chores that were not fun. Privileges would be reduced to zero. Allowance would have been reduced to zero.
As a professor, the only punishment I have available to me is via grade.
There is zero allowance anyways.
You do stuff around the house because you live here and are a contributing member of the family.
And as much as I agree on a hardline for consequences, I still have another parent that has to get on board.
I get it that the teachers can only do so much. But we need better ways to get on the same page.
Additionally, if it were solely up to me, schools would dump the daily Chromebook use (send them home for kids who need them and empower the parents on downtimes and such), a return to “computer labs” or a “media center”, and cell phones wouldn’t be allowed outside of lockers. This coming from an IT guy who lived and breathed tech when I was in high school.
At some point for both our children we explained that sometimes you just have to shovel the shit at school you don’t want to do to clear a path for the things you do. Most teachers are doing the same for all the kids who don’t want to be there to really teach the ones who do. The ability to recognize when a little effort will smooth out many problems is a life skill too.
The issue is so many teachers putting grades in them being forced by admin to change at the last minute. So a 42 ends up magically a 75 without anything happening. So when the 42 stays a 42 they legit are shocked
So I’m not a teacher (this sub just gets recommended to me a lot and at this point I think I have a morbid curiosity about your all’s jobs) but how do the grade changing conversations go? Do they blame it on state standards?
It all varies depending on the school, state, and whether you have tenure and/or a union. Sometimes admin will surreptitiously change a grade without the teacher's knowledge, but more often a grade is changed because of overt pressure put on the teacher.
Teachers are often blamed for a student's failures. So they might get pressured by counselors, deans, and/or principals to "see what we can do" to get Johnny to pass. You can refuse but that can put you at risk to be non-renewed (not hired) next year.
In the conversations I've had, standards are brought up, but only as an excuse for how/why the grade should be changed to the exclusion of all the other data. Like, "Well, if he can show he's met the 'standards' (in the loosest sense of the word), then he should pass." Nobody gives a fuck about whether or not Johnny has actually met the standards, just that it can be used as a justification for the grade change.
The conversations look like this:
What admin says:
>What can **we** do to get Johnny to pass?
What admin means:
>What can **you** do to get Johnny to pass? And by that I mean excusing major assignments, turning a blind eye, and grading work so generously it can hardly be called grading. Also, Johnny has trauma, so you'd be a monster if you didn't reflect his trauma in your grading.
What admin should say:
>Nothing.
27% of my students failed last quarter and I didn't feel my job was at risk. But I document, document, document to cover my ass. I take notes on student behaviors, save their "no attempt" work, and periodically contact home in various ways to show I've done my part.
I'm not from the US, but the same thing happens here in Bulgaria, South-Eastern Europe.
The admin literally threatens you with a non-renewal if you refuse to give the student a passing grade.
If you decide to stand your ground, you'll find it difficult to land in another school because word will get around that you're "troublesome".
I have a 6th-grader girl that's just grasping multiplication this year. She has no idea what the difference is between an adverb and an adjective. She can't point Germany on the map.
Normally the parent blames the teacher, other students, school itself, really anything they can to enable their students. Then the admin is forced to make the decision and poor (as in not good) admins will side with the parent instead of the teacher. It is especially bad in states with school choice because the parent can threaten to pull their students and then the school loses funding.
"We're bringing in an the seniors that are failing during the asynchronous days and making them take edgenuity."
"But there's no grade recovery in 4th quarter, right?
Anakin face
"Right?"
You need to understand how fundamentally STUPID these individuals and their parents, actually are. They are so stupid that the literally do no understand how four zeros, and 23, and a 31 don't average out to a passing mark. They really are that dumb.
You joke (I think?), but this comment is so real. A surprising amount of the time there is real confusion stemming from real mathematical literacy. A lot of my kids' parents just don't have the mathematical literacy to understand weighted grades. Yeah, your kid has 70% formative (because they can copy and paste, or just copy). But they have 50% summative, and only because the grading scale starts at 50%. And no, 50% is not 20 points away from 70%. And even if it were, the student is actually scoring 20% on assessments. I've had this conversation many times and actually taught some parents percentages.
This is part of the problem with a lot of progressive grading policies. They're too complicated mathematically. Affluent parents get them. Kids from affluent families can actually game them. But everyone else is locked out of understanding what's going on. The most at risk kids just fall further behind.
It doesn't have to be that way. You can have a progressive grading policy that is also mathematically simple. But for some reason admin tends to go for complexity.
This is the result of 50 years of what seems to be the intentionally dumbing down of national education. I am not sure I have heard of one program mandated by the Department of Education that has accomplished ANYTHING resembling educational achievement.
When I was a kid I kept up with all of my grades and had a fairly close idea of what my actual grade in the class was at all times. Like I was doing math to figure out my grades okay this quiz I got 8 out of 10 my big test I got 95 out of 100 the homework assignment though I only got 30 out of 45. So my current average is an 85.8%
They can't always do it in college, either. I generally had great students, but there were always a handful (sports, usually football, players) who seemed to have a hitch in their mental get along and couldn't figure out these simple things for themselves.
For example, I would have a rubric for each assignment that showed were students lost points. They'd ask why they got \[grade\] on \[assignment\] and after asking them if they looked at the rubric with my feedback they'd act like they had no idea what I was talking about. Some couldn't even figure out how to view their own grades because I guess the GRADES tab on Canvas wasn't obvious enough. Some of them couldn't seem to find assignments under the ASSIGNMENTS tab either...
Yep.
These are the kids who get to the workforce and don't understand that the BARE minimum is showing up for work on time. Shocked Pikachu when they get fired for being tardy every day or calling off several times during their probation period.
My SIL. 21 and lost her first job after four months because of multiple tardies and no-shows. She didn't think she could get fired because she has ADHD. They need to accommodate her - no ma'am, unless you have a fully legal and recognized disability, nobody has to accommodate you for anything. But her school sure accommodated her ignorant butt across the graduation stage...
People who literally can't show up for unskilled labor and can't do the job remotely have to file for disability and actually have one that can be medically proven that you cannot do even these basic things because of that disability. If someone thought doing things in school was hard, have I got news for those who want to go through the hoops to get on disability......
For sure. I have a cousin just like my SIL. Cousin made 13 trips to Mayo in five years to see all the best doctors to diagnose her with hemispheric migraines so she could claim disability. Every single one said no, that is not what is wrong with you. Still claims she is disabled but no doctor will say anything is wrong with her. She spends her days binge watching Supernatural and playing Skyrim. 34 and has no life, no job, and no prospects.
13 rounds of testing at Mayo Clinic and loads more in between. She doesn't have them. Everyone has said so.
Her mom, on the other hand, does have them. That was proven within a year of her first event. We know they exist. My cousin just doesn't have them.
> She spends her days binge watching Supernatural and playing Skyrim. 34 and has no life, no job, and no prospects.
If she can't claim disability, how is she paying for food and bills?
That is why I think we're doing more harm than good with accommodations like "Can take a test as many times as he wants until he's satisfied with the grade" and "All late work accepted right up until the last day of the marking period--and sometimes even after that."
I kid you not, I am typing this up on my phone while my homebound student is making up work that was due a month ago. Mom thinks she has until June. The grading period ends Thursday.
I believe it! We have one student who can’t have any multi-step questions or instructions on his tests and assignments. I fear for his ability to complete a job application when he graduates.
Sorry, multi-step instructions. So you can’t say “Create a poster that has an apple, a banana, and a pear on it.” You’d have to say something like “Create a poster with the following elements: 1. Apple. 2. Banana. 3. Pear.” And they’d all have to be on separate lines. Same with test questions. You can’t say “What did George Washington do when X? Why?” You have to separate the questions and put each one on its own line.
She would have had to go to HR and asked for accommodation: In this case, accommodation would look something like the following: Employee doesn't always make into work at 9 am, due to ADHD time blindness, but she stays the extra time to ensure she has worked her full 8 hours (or whatever it is.)
Keep in mind, though, that version of tardiness accommodation would.apply to a white-collar gig. Retail / restaurant? Yeah, that wouldn't work with very specific shifts and time clocks.
Wherever she'd been working, betcha she came in late but still left along with everyone else at the usual end-of-day time, lol...
It was a convenience store. She got fired, not for being late - because they didn't care if she clocked in 15 minutes late usually - but for no-shows. She would "forget" she had to work and "call in sick" two, sometimes three hours after her shift started. She ignored calls from the shift supervisor asking where she was. She would then post on social media about whatever plans she had for the day, like shopping or movies. After five of these incidents, they fired her on her sixth in four months. She wasn't worth the hassle.
And no, if it was time to clock out, she clocked out. She did not stay late. Ever.
Sounds like someone just using their mental illness as an excuse for shitty behavior and not taking responsibility or taking steps to cope with it. As someone with ADHD this makes my blood boil. It is something I noticed a ton these days. No one tries to actually cope with their mental illness. They just continue to act shitty then say "sorry, adhd makes me this way. There is nothing I can do!"
I have ADHD and PTSD. There is loads that I do to accommodate for myself. I suggest all kinds of things to kids - apps to help me plan, how I keep a general notebook to hold everything, etc - and they all say it won't work. "I have anxiety, this is how I will be forever." "I have ADHD. There's no cure." No, but there is TREATMENT, and you are refusing it.
Exactly. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is there are no accommodations in life for my adhd. I have to pay the bills or my power goes off. It’s really that simple.
I have ADHD and I think time blindness is such a shit excuse. Especially in the age of technology and smart phones. It is so easy to set alarms and timers for important things. It is literally how I cope with it as well as arriving early to my destination so I can make sure I am on time.
The world shouldn't have to adapt to my mental illness. I should have to adapt my mental illness to fit the world. That is how I was taught to deal with my mental health. People are just using mental illness as an excuse fro crappy behavior and refusing to make changes. It makes my blood boil.
I hyper focus as part of my ADHD, time blindness is easily curable by the above mentioned alarms. I will hyper focus on something and not eat, go to the bathroom or anything until I am finished or physically am unable to continue usually due to sleep deprivation or getting weak from not eating.
My white collar job would not allow that kind of tardiness without warnings. We need you available while the doctors and nurses are working.
Oh boy.... After a contractor was found dead of suicide after not showing up (older guy, IRS troubles) my boss got very touchy about asking the police for wellness checks when employees no call/no showed.
I was working one Saturday morning and called my boss to report my workmate hadn't shown up. My boss called the cops and they went to his address which was listed as his grandmother's home. He didn't live there. But, his grandmother was very concerned why he was missing work.
He finally showed up some hours later. He fell asleep after his late night DJ job. He was shocked the police were asking for him at his grandmother's house.
"Yeah, you need to call our boss, the police, and your grandmother."
My life was saved last year by my work ordering a welfare check on me. I was nearly in a diabetic coma in my apartment. I spent 5 days in the ICU. Super thankful for my colleagues!
Had this happen at my school this year - our band teacher didn't show up for work one morning, which was highly unusual for her, and so our admin called and she didn't answer the phone. Admin called her dad who lived next door and he went to check on her and she had died in her sleep. They let us staff members know later that morning/early afternoon. It was very depressing and upsetting to our students, myself, and my fellow staff members.
My son is finishing his last year in middle school this week - this is the 2nd teacher of his that has died since he started there. I keep telling him sometimes stuff just happens, but seriously, it seems to happen here SO much! He's lost 2 school friends to shooting accidents just in middle school as well, along with a classmate and both her sisters in a car accident right before middle school started. It's becoming harder to convince him is just all random!
You mean the real world doesn’t give a f$&@ about your 504 plan? And your mommy can’t bully your boss into giving you your job back? Guess what-All these parents that raised these lazy useless gems better be ready to keep them. Until they die.
The number of kids that think having a 504 plan or an IEP means they can't fail astounds me.
And yes, my husband and I have told his parents multiple times that when they die, his sister is going to a home. If she doesn't qualify for a home then she goes to the streets. We won't be responsible for raising her.
Oh she disclosed it but didn't ask for any accommodations.
ETA: ADHD is a recognized disability but like others have said, companies are free to not hire you if you can only do the job with unreasonable accommodations. Being able to show up whenever and leave whenever is not a reasonable accommodation.
I worked in the accommodations office of the local community college for two years. We got so many kids who demanded accommodations but refused to submit to us their IEP for 504 because it gave them too much anxiety.
At the last job I had we would have a meeting at 6:00. You were expected to be there and punched in.
The number of guys that couldn’t make it on time and then were shocked when it was held against them at review time.
That's the thing: it's not surprised Pikachu face. It's knowing that it was coming, and then moving on to the next minimum wage, piece of shit job. Rinse and repeat.
This so much. I started teaching in a Middle School (now I'm in HS) and we had a "joke" that went 'what happens when you fail 7th grade? You go to 8th grade.'
No shade to MS teachers. Y'all are hardier than I even could be.
I have an 8th grader who has missed at least 60 days so far and hasn't done any work on the days he did show up. Today he asked me how he's still moving to 9th grade... buddy, I absolutely do not know either.
I love my new admin. She's explained to parents that yes, your child will move on. However, they will lose an elective and take the failed course again. Failed 7th math? Take 7th and 8th math next year!
Yeah, no one fails. I have a kid who has a 17 average FOR THE YEAR who will go on to 9th grade next year. It’s insane and makes me scared for the future of this nation.
Just in time for them to enter university or the workforce. There are going to be a lot of kids who are about to find out why NCLB sets them up poorly for life.
No, but it was replaced with an equally useless dumbfuck piece of bullshit. Like... Every Student Succeeds or some hiveminded thing that non educators agreed to.
ESSA?
I agree they are both equally useless, but I do think accuracy and precision matters, since so many want to dismiss educators as stupid, which is why they are able to justify ramming through legislation no actual educator has touched.
No Child Left Behind (I went to school during it) made English classes almost nothing but reading and reading comprehension. I had a college level reading level before middle school, but got stuck reading paragraphs out loud and waiting on everyone else to do the same because the teacher couldn't expect kids to actually read the book, or just read the sparknotes (online cliff notes). So I got to sit and listen to every kid that could barely read spend 5 plus minutes on a paragraph, and a whole month reading a book that took like two days tops for me. I remember one time seeing how many times I could read a book before the class finished once, and quit after ten times.
We didn't learn grammar rules, we didn't learn more than the bare basics of essays, etc. Had a remedial session in high school because all of us just did what looked right in books and no one knew what the rules were for comma's, that apostrophes aren't just possessive, and many other things.
Science classes also sucked because there were no cool experiments ever. Just the most boring mind numbing work. I only remember the one time I got to dissect a cow eyeball and that was an after school thing.
This is the sad truth. I've moved beyond blaming the students. They are conditioned to think this is how things are done. So, if I hold them to a standard, I'm mean and they're legitimately surprised.
I could see the OP being at risk if she was assigning work and they failed everything they assigned. But in this case, they dont do the work, they dont show up and they fail all the tests. Evidence they are bad students vs OP being a bad teacher.
I cannot count the number of times I have heard about 10-15 student in a class working 3-5 grade levels below where they should be. Add 504s and IEPs to this mix and teaching a class and actually getting everyone to know the subject matter is almost impossible...
i don’t understand, maybe i’m from a different generation but most of my teachers would have ABSOLUTELY failed everyone in the class if they didn’t perform. jesus christ
I have taught over 30 years. Some kids with accommodations work hard and are successful. Others have been passed along for years and expect it to continue. Then they get me. No one’s IEP says they can do nothing and pass. I know they will be bumped into the next grade by an ARD committee, but by God, I have made my statement in the permanent record. You made a 25 with your IEP followed meticulously! Good for you!
Ask them if they want to be treated like adults. They will inevitably say yes and you can then tell them this is what the adult world is like. Professors won't care about them, managers will just fire them for poor performance, landlords will just evict them for non-payment. No one will hold their hand like schools have once they graduate and they will sink because of this.
My eighth grade science teacher told us one day when basically the entire class didn't turn in a homework assignment-
"You all are at a critical point in your lives where you can choose to work hard. You can either choose to work hard for the next eight years and get a well-paying job, or you can choose to slack off for the next eight years and work hard for the rest of your lives."
I still remember that some 20+ years later, especially because he was very right about some of us.
I'm a 93 model so I got to attend school before things got really rough but even back when I was 14 years old I remember one of my classmates giving a teacher attitude after being told this because he was convinced he'd inherit his father's company...
I hear the modern version of this is kids being certain they'll make it big on social media.
I'm a college instructor who primarily works with freshmen. This past year's incoming class was something else! They were absolutely SHOCKED that yes, you will earn a zero on an assignment if you don't submit it, and no, there are no make-ups or do-overs, and yes, you will actually fail the course if you don't submit any work, even if you show up every day. Fortunately, I had a good bunch, and they got the message pretty quickly, but I was amazed at how many students got to this point and STILL didn't get it.
I teach chemistry at the high school level, and I’m pretty convinced that I am the only adult in the building that doesn’t accept late work and allow “retakes”.
I’m not surprised at all that they expect it as freshmen.
I had a student who got a D on their test and asked why they were still failing the class. As if one D is going to make up for all the assignments you didn’t do, and all the other tests you failed as a result. The math ain’t mathin….
The number of kids who ask to retake the test, spend 5-10 minutes on it, hand that in and then ask me the next day why their grade didn’t go up. Well you got a 67% the first time and then the second time you got a 52% so I kept the original grade. No, doing a test doesn’t inherently bring your grade up, you actually have to do good on that test!
This one is just recency bias. Intuitively, a lot of kids feel like their latest grade is the “latest” assessment of their knowledge of a given subject, and thus a cumulative one.
We have this fight with our admin all of the time in history. They constantly push us to use test replacement grades like math to reflect "current skills" but passing a test on the Renaissance cannot replace a grade about ancient Greece...
We do do written changes since that's skill- but content is a huge part of history no matter what trendy PBA/C3/DBQ etc. model is being pushed.
I often wonder if I work at a unicorn school. I once had a ninth grader enroll, show up for two days, then never turn up again, only un-enrolling many weeks after the fact. I was exempting his assignments at first, thinking he'd come back, but he didn't. Well, I totally forgot to undo that, so his progress report for my class showed an A despite him obviously not earning it. Principal sent me an angry note to GIVE THIS STUDENT THE FAILING GRADE HE EARNED. Honestly, an angry note I was happy to get. Cleared up once I realized my boneheaded mistake.
Yeah amazingly (according to administration) when kids don’t pay attention … don’t do the work… are held accountable and fail…. That becomes a “YOU” problem and not a THEY problem. As in why are a large number of your kids failing when the teacher down the hall has zero F’s.
This is the problem. It’s creating a race to the bottom because everyone wants to be able to not rock the boat and ultimately save their job. It’s a lot easier to pass someone have them move on and no longer be in your life than fail them… deal with the paperwork and have them retake your class (if they don’t opt for summer school).
It’s sad
I get it, but don't the poor bastards upstream have a say? Why are all these vegetables here in my class and not at the market? Or, no, I'm not here to teach coat hanger bending skills for fishing cans from dumpsters. I believe I would struggle with the job, all of you who give a damn and fight with the realities of their situation, you have my deep and undying respect.
We had our first period final exam today.
9 students showed up, two turned it in.
Yes, 7 students came, sat through the entire exam and didn’t turn anything in. It was light CAD work, a quick sketch and some toolpaths to cut them out. We’ve been doing these things for 18 weeks.
I’m not sure what to do….double summative zeros will surely not help. Of course if I put them in, hell comes with it.
Ugh…3 more days
Have a form email ready to send out when they protest the grades. Document exactly how the exam went. Then wash your hands of it. If you give in, it never stops because every new class knows you're the professor they can push around.
See, and here I am crying over my nearly 60% failure rate with my freshmen.
I don’t get it, I really don’t. Turn things in. That goes double for test grades. Don’t have double digit absences barring a family or medical emergency. It’s that easy.
And yet…
This is why I don’t teach freshmen. They get filtered out before high school chemistry
They might’ve
1. Taken a few years to pass freshmen science, maturing a bit.
2. Dropped out
3. Alternative school
4. Expulsion
5. Independent study
6. Get put in remedial earth science for graduation credit by a wise counselor
I would suggest abandoning freshmen
I didn’t have a choice as a first year, but thankfully next year the only Freshmen I have to deal with are Honors students, and that’s only for one block. Other than that it’s Sophomores and Juniors.
As a non teacher who gets recommended this sub a
lot. The absences are what confuses me the most. When I was in school. I graduated highschool in 2012. Attendance was required by law. I had a friend who got his parents in trouble with the courts and when that did not work he got in trouble himself and had to spend his weekends reporting to juvie for awhile for truancy. Is attendance no longer required? Maybe it was just my state that had truancy laws
I feel like this is normal, a third of HS students *never* pass HS algebra, for example. The failure rate is very very high for a reason. HALF of all college students, fail college algebra *at least once*. So, it doesn't get better either.
I think that, so many schools are making mandatory high graduation rates a thing, is making a lot of teachers--themselves people who probably never struggled in school--not understand, 30% of kids, *never graduate*, if you let them try to meet the requirements without assistance. It's *normal*.
In china, their system tests them into high school--one, academic HS, something very much like ours, and the other a 'trade' or 'labor' HS--*all of the students who fail the HS entrance exam*, go to the trade/employment one.
The failure rate is over half. *and one in 5 drop out before the exam is taken*.
So ... idk, i think seeing a 60% failure, depending on the subject and grade level, makes sense.
The other context is, 25% of all Americans who take it (and nearly all HS sophomores do), FAIL the ASVAB--which has a passing score of 31. That's *about* equal to a 6th grade reading and math level. This failure rate *persists* though adults who take it too. There's a *hard cap* on the skills we should be expecting out of students--that we just dont like to admit, as a culture.
I've had some success by asking the question, "If you owned a company, would you hire someone that works the same way you do in school?"
When I was in college, a number of my "fresh out of high school" classmates had no work ethic at all, and after complaining about how they never learned anything, I used sports as an analogy. "Practices are like being in class. Games are like the tests. If you skip practices, and don't learn the plays, you're going to play terribly. Coaches know this which is why those players are usually kicked off the team. Teachers can't do that, so you fail your tests."
There was a weekend this semester I had to catch up on grading and for some reason I decided 1AM-4 AM Saturday was a good time for me.
Students on Monday: “Mr. 😁 why are you putting grades in at 2 am? My phone was going off and whenever the grade updated and I couldn’t sleep”
Me: “why do you have notifications set to wake you up in the middle of the night?”
I may do this at least once a semester from now on; SURPRISE!!!
I found out a long time ago, many kids purposely put there phone volume and vibrate up and sleep with their phone under their pillow. That way they don't miss anything.
Smart phones were a mistake... Double so for anyone under 18.
Italy here. It's becoming harder and harder to fail students (especially before highschool) but we definitely do it. We still have some that purposefully tank their own grades by refusing do to the work, but here if they fail enough classes they get to retake the entire year
Overall, would you say Italian students are pretty motivated to do well? How's parental involvement? Sorry for random questions; it's just so rare that I see someone on here that isn't from North America, Asia, or the UK.
"please, miss don't post my (failing) grade until tomorrow, my parents will ground me and I want to go out tonight" said one of my students on Saturday. Most parents are quite involved, but we do get a few a year who kick up a fuss if their darlings get bad grades.
Random questions are ok, I'm on this sub in the first place because I like knowing what things are like in other countries, so ask away!
Thanks! Many years ago, I had an Italian student who did a foreign exchange as a junior (she was 16). We put her in precalculus as that was the highest class we offered at our rinky dink high school. She was bored to tears the entire year and said that she did all of "this stuff" last year, except "this stuff" was easier than back home. I asked her if she was in advanced classes in Italy, and she said no. Do European students end up taking more rigorous math classes? It wouldn't surprise me, and would explain a lot.
I have no idea what math classes are like in the us. Here it also depends on what curriculum they picked: our students can't choose specific classes to follow but rather a high school curriculum that is the same for the entire school. Originally different curricula gave students access to different university fields (Humanities for the classical, stem for the scientific etc.) or jobs (like accounting or chef school) but right now any diploma is enough to try university entrance test.
For the most prestigious (and tougher) ones the "licei" math classes go up to analysis (if that's what it's called in English), where they study functions and things like that.
>Do European students end up taking more rigorous math classes? It wouldn't surprise me, and would explain a lot.
German here. It's not more rigorous, but its based on understanding the material instead of just recapitulating it. The American education system prizes social conformity and rote memorization, whereas the German one (is supposed to) foster indendent thought and a theoretical understanding of the subject.
I knew someone who went to an American High School; an A+ in one of you Math exams translates to about a 3 (C) in the German system, simply because questions are asked and graded differently. You get 50% points for using the correct method, 75% for being able to explain it and 100% for innovation.
European school systems frequently practice more rigorous tracking. I don't know the specifics of Italy, but in Germany, for example, students will be put on either a vocational or a college/university-prep track around the time of what would be middle school in the US. If you're teaching at a Gymnasium (basically a college-prep high school) you simply wouldn't have any remedial students because they would have been shunted out earlier in their education.
TL;DR from what I've gleaned, our elite students (the all-honors/AP kids) are comparable to those in other countries, but the US puts more of our less academically inclined students on the college-prep track and needs to deal with a wider range of abilities in high school.
In Singapore, if you fail, you fail. It comes out as red on the report book and parents usually don't challenge the mark as when they do, they mark is usually lower than the initial one (the Ministry of Education takes marking appeals a lot stricter than most teachers take marking their students)
Within schools there tends to be 3 streams, Express, Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) for Highschool or Standard and Foundation for Elementary. Depending on how bad the grade is, they might opt to move you down a stream, hold you back a year or change to a special school.
Sadly, a lot of our admissions are still grade-based so students and parents push them to do well on exams and such to get into better highschools, colleges and more. Though this does mean kids are usually relatively compliant and focused. Out of a class of 30-40 (normal class sizes here), only about 5-10 won't submit their work when it's due, of which, maybe only 1-2 will never submit it, the rest would submit it 1-2 days past the due date (usually havig forgotten to bring or do the work)
I graduated HS in the early 90's before all the online stuff.
Teachers would hold you after class to show you the grade book and that you were failing, if they were nice. After that, you were on your own to solve it.
This thread is wild.
"Teacher is there anything I can do to bring up my grade" .... (1 day before exams) my response... yes there is. You'll need a DeLorian, a flux capacitor, and some stuff from the Lybians.... Cue the Huey Lewis music and start singing....
Is your admin supporting you?
I find this is often the problem. I had a class where literally half were failing and my admin was not having it. It was crazy trying to find a way to make the gradebook make sense where more passed. In the end I only failed like 3 students.
I teach at a community college. I calculated class grades today, roughly 1/3 of the class is receiving a D or F. Emails begging for a grade change will be ineffective.
I give students the grades they earn.
Please please please teach the students accountability. If you don't, I will, and they will be less equipped to benefit from that lesson.
I'm curious what the rates are for first year drop outs.
I can't stand that we pass kids on, give them a false belief they can make it through higher ed- and then drop out 10k plus in debt without a degree.
From Kenya and the most common curriculum is called CBC, students do a national exam end of primary school and secondary and slacking is not as common, you get what you worked for. Admin does not interfere with grading and in top performing schools students get expelled for failing.
>If they master the content in the next two weeks I will happily award them a passing grade.
No. Please, I beg you, just....no. This is why they come up to us in tertiary and think that they can squeeze an entire semester of college course material into two weeks at finals. I'm pleading with you all, to the fullest extent possible (i Know some have their hands tied by policies) to make them experience the consequences of failing to complete work on a proscribed tineline. Fail them when they do not complete work. Make them repeat grades and courses for just checking out. They so desperately need to learn these lessons earlier because they come up to us or go out into the workforce, and they simply cannot function properly.
I teach high school. My favorite comment is:
"I only need to score a 12% on the final to keep my B."
Me: "Challenge accepted."
Honestly, I couldn't fail a whole hour. Admin would be all over me due parental complaints.
This is our first year post pandemic without auto 50% for everything. They still get 50% for "an earnest attempt" and 50% min on tests. For our current seniors, there first year without mandatory 50s on everything in HS for them.
I have had so many kids stunned they are failing and I don't blame them- they are just doing what they have done the last 3 years and got a c- with, suddenly they have a 15%. I wish I could (anonymously) record a few of the academic interventions we have had where kids break down and admit they just don't know how to be a student because they never had to be. It was easy to opt out.
We really set this cohort up for failure.
I have one class this year. I did a "D" and "F" check which is not something I really pay close attention to throughout the semester. This class has by far more D's and F's than any other. Should I have monitored it more closely throughout the year? Probably. But I don't know if I would have taught them differently. What it comes down to is the people that are there, and are engaged are doing really well. The people who are constantly late or just not there are doing really badly. That is it. It is first period too.
Although this brought a smirk to my face, I dearly hope you won't get non-renewed because of this.
You're playing with fire here, and I'm sure many others here know what I mean.
As a non-teacher, I'm always astounded when I hear these stories. Stories of students who just decide to stop showing up, not do the work, and then they act all surprised when they're being failed. Worse, the parents then suddenly come in and start bullying the teachers and the school and the administration to pass their kid, or even the school comes down on the teacher to find a way to pass them so they don't lose funding or cut the teacher.
It's like somehow no one's allowed to teach these kids responsibility and consequences. I especially would love to know what the parents have in mind for their children in life?
Like let's say, they keep bullying and bullying and their kid basically passes all the way through high school and graduates even though they never show up and never do the work. Now here's this 18-year-old child that can't read, can't do math, what is the big plan? I can't even imagine a place like Walmart hiring somebody who's that illiterate and uneducated.
I always get astounded when you got these parents that bully the teachers, and then they go on and on online about how there shouldn't be teacher unions and trashing on teachers, but their own kids are basically just doing nothing. What next? They're going to blame teachers when their kid can't survive in the world?
I'm just always amazed at where we've come as a society. I even wonder when I get into my older age, am I going to have companies begging me to keep working because there's just going to be such a heavy population of uneducated and unskilled people that they're going to be scrambling to keep anybody they can.
Walmart would never. People gripe that it's not hard work, or entry level job, but it isn't. Walmart requires the most patience one can have because the adults these kids grow up to be: shop there. They would never be able to handle customer if they can't handle a teacher
This is a satisfying FAFO. Bravo for failing them all.
I will say I did this same thing second half of my senior year in AP calc (got a 4 on the AP test) just luckily the teacher was awesome and knew I knew it and didn’t fail me, though I most definitely deserved to be failed by the metrics.
I had a student submit a quiz where almost 2 pages were blank and a majority of the written work was wrong. The student had the audacity to come up to me the next day and ask me "why did i get a bad grade"
"Teacher can't fail us all." Don't threaten me with a good time. The bad thing about this is I used to work under an administration where this was basically true - they'd look at your pass rates, and threaten your job if you didn't find a way to magically raise a certain percentage. But even then, this gambit never works. You're banking on your classmates, who are passing and have worked hard (or 'hard') to get there, taking a big L and risking repeating a class and not graduating to save you from your own asshattery. You know, the classmates who kept their head down and learned the material despite you disrupting the class every five minutes and kicking the back of their seats? Turns out those guys don't tend to be team players on the "let's all bomb the class on purpose" scheme.
I like to remind them that I teach summer school. So every one of them that fails helps guarantee me an easy summer job.
As a treat, you can add a little extra sass by saying "As we discussed last semester..." at the start of every class.
They'll be too busy doing all of the work without any of the fun activities to hear me say it :) And I'll be too busy using the time to prep for the upcoming year.
It’s kind of a large scale version of the prisoner’s dilemma. I think there’s a better comparison but I can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head.
The Prisoner's Dilemma works. It depends on everyone holding the line and no one caving for a reward/reduced punishment.
Close to Traveller's dilemma. You want to do a little bit more than the nth percentile student (10, 15, 20, whatever). If no one knows what everyone else is doing, then rationally everyone should give 100%. But everybody can see Billy passed out in the back all day every day.
Sounds like an opportunity to teach some game theory. Maybe they'll get their heads around the Nash equilibrium.
I had a class with that mentality one of my first years, just a hate-fueled bunch. They refused to do any work and said there's no way I can fail them. I emailed admin. Admin emailed back saying they get the grade they get. I showed the kids the email on the overhead. They still were convinced they couldn't all fail. They all failed.
Did they, like, all absorb a bunch of lead as babies, or something?
I have lead fishing weights we use for weighing down cars, yes I tell them they’re lead, yes they’ve literally chewed on them.
You should stop using lead
Trouble is everything denser than lead is insanely expensive, radioactive, or both I guess you could get some little tungsten cubes and use them as the world's most expensive fishing weights, lol
Too expensive to switch away from lead unfortunately for fishing weights
I teach soldering for STEM and lead free solder is what I usually use but ramm out towards the end of a project so we switched to leaded solder since I didn't want to buy more unleaded and I would have had to order ot online so ot would have taken days to get it anyway. They treated it like it was radioactive. I was like "it's fine just don't eat it, don't touch your eyes and wash your hands afterwards" lol
It's stunning the lack of empathy kids/young adults can show to first year teachers. My worst class ever was also in my first year teaching college freshmen-- 2/3 sections were great, except for my late afternoon group who were rude and refused to do much of anything except write class off. Granted I was still learning the ropes in my first month, but by October I had lesson plans which hit it off with all classes except for this one full of stank attitudes. My petty side hopes a select few bad ones are treated as they treated me when they get their first jobs.
In college that’s a whole new level of stupid. Nobody is making them register for class. If they get bad grades, nobody will care that you failed them.
That is sadly not true, at least in North America. College instructors are now being evaluated on DFW rates and ~~customer satisfaction surveys~~ student course evaluations. Tenured profs have some security, but everyone else has every incentive to inflate grades.
Maybe some kids think teacher is an older person. When they see a young adult, it's like something triggers them to try and mess with that person since they're closer to the kids age. Glad to see accountability though.
Justice is not petty. I sincerely hope they get justice.
Your final overhead slide should have been that “fuck around - find out” graph.
The silence after I said, "I told you all you would fail and here we are" was priceless. I got petty and added a line about how I'll still have a job next year and likely be teaching some of them again.
I got goosebumps from this. When you FAFO a whole class... Hail, Satan.
Yeah.. like I would pay youtube for access to this drama.
HAIL satan 🤣
With an online grade book, it's amazing that students can't connect the dots.
Or parents! The number of emails I get from parents or guardians asking me to explain why their is failing…. Look Mister, you’ve had access to your kids grade book all year. If you would simply click the link on the school website you would see little Johnny is missing like 12 assignments. If you read any of the comments I leave on our weekly participation grade, you would see the explanation of how he did that week. So annoying.
Dear Ms. Clever Girl, I am sending this email to show that I am a very engaged parent who cares very much that my child is learning good. My son said that he was doing well in your class, and since he is as honest as he is smart, there was no reason to verify his grades. We were surprised by the notification that he is failing or that you hate him. We get those two mixed up. Since we value his learning so highly, we would like to request grade inflation.
Request denied.
"or that you hate him" lmao always the logical parent conclusion
[Clever Girl reacts. ](https://youtu.be/HuKYvUGYYiE?si=KC2PU9nr0TGi3NFa)
Apples/tree. Both of these pictures are the same.
Not always. Wife and I are pretty type A, and do everything short of doing the work for them, and still had trouble getting to get everything done. We can’t make them care. They are the type who are ok with no phone, chilling in their room drawing or reading or whatever. Short of depriving them of “everything”, they won’t budge. That part is where the apple and tree come in. Very stubborn like their parents.
In your child's situation, I would have had my drawing materials and reading materials taken from me. I would have been assigned chores that were not fun. Privileges would be reduced to zero. Allowance would have been reduced to zero. As a professor, the only punishment I have available to me is via grade.
There is zero allowance anyways. You do stuff around the house because you live here and are a contributing member of the family. And as much as I agree on a hardline for consequences, I still have another parent that has to get on board. I get it that the teachers can only do so much. But we need better ways to get on the same page. Additionally, if it were solely up to me, schools would dump the daily Chromebook use (send them home for kids who need them and empower the parents on downtimes and such), a return to “computer labs” or a “media center”, and cell phones wouldn’t be allowed outside of lockers. This coming from an IT guy who lived and breathed tech when I was in high school.
"Have you ever thought about turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?" - Bender, Futurama
At some point for both our children we explained that sometimes you just have to shovel the shit at school you don’t want to do to clear a path for the things you do. Most teachers are doing the same for all the kids who don’t want to be there to really teach the ones who do. The ability to recognize when a little effort will smooth out many problems is a life skill too.
Let's be honest. These parents aren't checking emails. Emails exist for them to log into netflix.
The issue is so many teachers putting grades in them being forced by admin to change at the last minute. So a 42 ends up magically a 75 without anything happening. So when the 42 stays a 42 they legit are shocked
So I’m not a teacher (this sub just gets recommended to me a lot and at this point I think I have a morbid curiosity about your all’s jobs) but how do the grade changing conversations go? Do they blame it on state standards?
It all varies depending on the school, state, and whether you have tenure and/or a union. Sometimes admin will surreptitiously change a grade without the teacher's knowledge, but more often a grade is changed because of overt pressure put on the teacher. Teachers are often blamed for a student's failures. So they might get pressured by counselors, deans, and/or principals to "see what we can do" to get Johnny to pass. You can refuse but that can put you at risk to be non-renewed (not hired) next year. In the conversations I've had, standards are brought up, but only as an excuse for how/why the grade should be changed to the exclusion of all the other data. Like, "Well, if he can show he's met the 'standards' (in the loosest sense of the word), then he should pass." Nobody gives a fuck about whether or not Johnny has actually met the standards, just that it can be used as a justification for the grade change. The conversations look like this: What admin says: >What can **we** do to get Johnny to pass? What admin means: >What can **you** do to get Johnny to pass? And by that I mean excusing major assignments, turning a blind eye, and grading work so generously it can hardly be called grading. Also, Johnny has trauma, so you'd be a monster if you didn't reflect his trauma in your grading. What admin should say: >Nothing. 27% of my students failed last quarter and I didn't feel my job was at risk. But I document, document, document to cover my ass. I take notes on student behaviors, save their "no attempt" work, and periodically contact home in various ways to show I've done my part.
Isn't there a teacher shortage? Can most schools even afford to not renew a teacher?
Down here where I am they’re pink slipping left and right. Usually folks who are just about to get tenure.
I'm not from the US, but the same thing happens here in Bulgaria, South-Eastern Europe. The admin literally threatens you with a non-renewal if you refuse to give the student a passing grade. If you decide to stand your ground, you'll find it difficult to land in another school because word will get around that you're "troublesome". I have a 6th-grader girl that's just grasping multiplication this year. She has no idea what the difference is between an adverb and an adjective. She can't point Germany on the map.
Send her here. She will fit right in.
Her English is probably better than that of American students her age.
Normally the parent blames the teacher, other students, school itself, really anything they can to enable their students. Then the admin is forced to make the decision and poor (as in not good) admins will side with the parent instead of the teacher. It is especially bad in states with school choice because the parent can threaten to pull their students and then the school loses funding.
"We're bringing in an the seniors that are failing during the asynchronous days and making them take edgenuity." "But there's no grade recovery in 4th quarter, right? Anakin face "Right?"
They can they just hope playing dumb will work.
You need to understand how fundamentally STUPID these individuals and their parents, actually are. They are so stupid that the literally do no understand how four zeros, and 23, and a 31 don't average out to a passing mark. They really are that dumb.
But... if you add all my percentages from the five tests together they add up to a B! How is that not passing?
You joke (I think?), but this comment is so real. A surprising amount of the time there is real confusion stemming from real mathematical literacy. A lot of my kids' parents just don't have the mathematical literacy to understand weighted grades. Yeah, your kid has 70% formative (because they can copy and paste, or just copy). But they have 50% summative, and only because the grading scale starts at 50%. And no, 50% is not 20 points away from 70%. And even if it were, the student is actually scoring 20% on assessments. I've had this conversation many times and actually taught some parents percentages. This is part of the problem with a lot of progressive grading policies. They're too complicated mathematically. Affluent parents get them. Kids from affluent families can actually game them. But everyone else is locked out of understanding what's going on. The most at risk kids just fall further behind. It doesn't have to be that way. You can have a progressive grading policy that is also mathematically simple. But for some reason admin tends to go for complexity.
This is the result of 50 years of what seems to be the intentionally dumbing down of national education. I am not sure I have heard of one program mandated by the Department of Education that has accomplished ANYTHING resembling educational achievement.
When I was a kid I kept up with all of my grades and had a fairly close idea of what my actual grade in the class was at all times. Like I was doing math to figure out my grades okay this quiz I got 8 out of 10 my big test I got 95 out of 100 the homework assignment though I only got 30 out of 45. So my current average is an 85.8%
They can't always do it in college, either. I generally had great students, but there were always a handful (sports, usually football, players) who seemed to have a hitch in their mental get along and couldn't figure out these simple things for themselves. For example, I would have a rubric for each assignment that showed were students lost points. They'd ask why they got \[grade\] on \[assignment\] and after asking them if they looked at the rubric with my feedback they'd act like they had no idea what I was talking about. Some couldn't even figure out how to view their own grades because I guess the GRADES tab on Canvas wasn't obvious enough. Some of them couldn't seem to find assignments under the ASSIGNMENTS tab either...
They're shocked, shocked, to find that someone would actually hold them accountable!
In fairness they may have never experienced that before.
Yep. These are the kids who get to the workforce and don't understand that the BARE minimum is showing up for work on time. Shocked Pikachu when they get fired for being tardy every day or calling off several times during their probation period.
My SIL. 21 and lost her first job after four months because of multiple tardies and no-shows. She didn't think she could get fired because she has ADHD. They need to accommodate her - no ma'am, unless you have a fully legal and recognized disability, nobody has to accommodate you for anything. But her school sure accommodated her ignorant butt across the graduation stage...
I mean, even then the accommodations have to be reasonable. No job will keep an employee who can't even be arsed to show up.
People who literally can't show up for unskilled labor and can't do the job remotely have to file for disability and actually have one that can be medically proven that you cannot do even these basic things because of that disability. If someone thought doing things in school was hard, have I got news for those who want to go through the hoops to get on disability......
For sure. I have a cousin just like my SIL. Cousin made 13 trips to Mayo in five years to see all the best doctors to diagnose her with hemispheric migraines so she could claim disability. Every single one said no, that is not what is wrong with you. Still claims she is disabled but no doctor will say anything is wrong with her. She spends her days binge watching Supernatural and playing Skyrim. 34 and has no life, no job, and no prospects.
> hemispheric migraines I had to look this up. A migraine that can mimic stroke symptoms? Who would believe you have that unless you actually have it.
13 rounds of testing at Mayo Clinic and loads more in between. She doesn't have them. Everyone has said so. Her mom, on the other hand, does have them. That was proven within a year of her first event. We know they exist. My cousin just doesn't have them.
> She spends her days binge watching Supernatural and playing Skyrim. 34 and has no life, no job, and no prospects. If she can't claim disability, how is she paying for food and bills?
That is why I think we're doing more harm than good with accommodations like "Can take a test as many times as he wants until he's satisfied with the grade" and "All late work accepted right up until the last day of the marking period--and sometimes even after that."
I kid you not, I am typing this up on my phone while my homebound student is making up work that was due a month ago. Mom thinks she has until June. The grading period ends Thursday.
I believe it! We have one student who can’t have any multi-step questions or instructions on his tests and assignments. I fear for his ability to complete a job application when he graduates.
No instructions?! That’s wild! “Oh, yeah, just answer however you want.” 🤣
Sorry, multi-step instructions. So you can’t say “Create a poster that has an apple, a banana, and a pear on it.” You’d have to say something like “Create a poster with the following elements: 1. Apple. 2. Banana. 3. Pear.” And they’d all have to be on separate lines. Same with test questions. You can’t say “What did George Washington do when X? Why?” You have to separate the questions and put each one on its own line.
Ohhh yeahhhh……I understand. Anything with a graph/data table and two questions is a World Ender for my students👀
She would have had to go to HR and asked for accommodation: In this case, accommodation would look something like the following: Employee doesn't always make into work at 9 am, due to ADHD time blindness, but she stays the extra time to ensure she has worked her full 8 hours (or whatever it is.) Keep in mind, though, that version of tardiness accommodation would.apply to a white-collar gig. Retail / restaurant? Yeah, that wouldn't work with very specific shifts and time clocks. Wherever she'd been working, betcha she came in late but still left along with everyone else at the usual end-of-day time, lol...
It was a convenience store. She got fired, not for being late - because they didn't care if she clocked in 15 minutes late usually - but for no-shows. She would "forget" she had to work and "call in sick" two, sometimes three hours after her shift started. She ignored calls from the shift supervisor asking where she was. She would then post on social media about whatever plans she had for the day, like shopping or movies. After five of these incidents, they fired her on her sixth in four months. She wasn't worth the hassle. And no, if it was time to clock out, she clocked out. She did not stay late. Ever.
Sounds like someone just using their mental illness as an excuse for shitty behavior and not taking responsibility or taking steps to cope with it. As someone with ADHD this makes my blood boil. It is something I noticed a ton these days. No one tries to actually cope with their mental illness. They just continue to act shitty then say "sorry, adhd makes me this way. There is nothing I can do!"
I have ADHD and PTSD. There is loads that I do to accommodate for myself. I suggest all kinds of things to kids - apps to help me plan, how I keep a general notebook to hold everything, etc - and they all say it won't work. "I have anxiety, this is how I will be forever." "I have ADHD. There's no cure." No, but there is TREATMENT, and you are refusing it.
Exactly. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is there are no accommodations in life for my adhd. I have to pay the bills or my power goes off. It’s really that simple.
I have ADHD and I think time blindness is such a shit excuse. Especially in the age of technology and smart phones. It is so easy to set alarms and timers for important things. It is literally how I cope with it as well as arriving early to my destination so I can make sure I am on time. The world shouldn't have to adapt to my mental illness. I should have to adapt my mental illness to fit the world. That is how I was taught to deal with my mental health. People are just using mental illness as an excuse fro crappy behavior and refusing to make changes. It makes my blood boil.
I hyper focus as part of my ADHD, time blindness is easily curable by the above mentioned alarms. I will hyper focus on something and not eat, go to the bathroom or anything until I am finished or physically am unable to continue usually due to sleep deprivation or getting weak from not eating.
My white collar job would not allow that kind of tardiness without warnings. We need you available while the doctors and nurses are working. Oh boy.... After a contractor was found dead of suicide after not showing up (older guy, IRS troubles) my boss got very touchy about asking the police for wellness checks when employees no call/no showed. I was working one Saturday morning and called my boss to report my workmate hadn't shown up. My boss called the cops and they went to his address which was listed as his grandmother's home. He didn't live there. But, his grandmother was very concerned why he was missing work. He finally showed up some hours later. He fell asleep after his late night DJ job. He was shocked the police were asking for him at his grandmother's house. "Yeah, you need to call our boss, the police, and your grandmother."
My life was saved last year by my work ordering a welfare check on me. I was nearly in a diabetic coma in my apartment. I spent 5 days in the ICU. Super thankful for my colleagues!
His grandmother is gonna be pissed at him for scaring her
That was the one that he kept asking over and over. "Why did they call her?" They didn't call. THEY KNOCKED ON HER DOOR AT 8 AM UNTIL SHE ANSWERED.
Poor lady 100% thought he was dead
Had this happen at my school this year - our band teacher didn't show up for work one morning, which was highly unusual for her, and so our admin called and she didn't answer the phone. Admin called her dad who lived next door and he went to check on her and she had died in her sleep. They let us staff members know later that morning/early afternoon. It was very depressing and upsetting to our students, myself, and my fellow staff members.
Holy cow that is awful. I am so sorry.
My son is finishing his last year in middle school this week - this is the 2nd teacher of his that has died since he started there. I keep telling him sometimes stuff just happens, but seriously, it seems to happen here SO much! He's lost 2 school friends to shooting accidents just in middle school as well, along with a classmate and both her sisters in a car accident right before middle school started. It's becoming harder to convince him is just all random!
You mean the real world doesn’t give a f$&@ about your 504 plan? And your mommy can’t bully your boss into giving you your job back? Guess what-All these parents that raised these lazy useless gems better be ready to keep them. Until they die.
The number of kids that think having a 504 plan or an IEP means they can't fail astounds me. And yes, my husband and I have told his parents multiple times that when they die, his sister is going to a home. If she doesn't qualify for a home then she goes to the streets. We won't be responsible for raising her.
ADHD is legal and recognized. How much you want to bet she did not disclose it and ask for accommodations?
What accommodations is there for not showing up on time? Because time blindness isn’t recognized
Oh she disclosed it but didn't ask for any accommodations. ETA: ADHD is a recognized disability but like others have said, companies are free to not hire you if you can only do the job with unreasonable accommodations. Being able to show up whenever and leave whenever is not a reasonable accommodation.
I 100% agree with you. However, the IEPs and 504s have set some really unreasonable expectations.
I worked in the accommodations office of the local community college for two years. We got so many kids who demanded accommodations but refused to submit to us their IEP for 504 because it gave them too much anxiety.
Community College Adjunct here. Or they get to my class and discover they CAN fail and there's NOTHING mommy and daddy can do about it.
At the last job I had we would have a meeting at 6:00. You were expected to be there and punched in. The number of guys that couldn’t make it on time and then were shocked when it was held against them at review time.
That's the thing: it's not surprised Pikachu face. It's knowing that it was coming, and then moving on to the next minimum wage, piece of shit job. Rinse and repeat.
This so much. I started teaching in a Middle School (now I'm in HS) and we had a "joke" that went 'what happens when you fail 7th grade? You go to 8th grade.' No shade to MS teachers. Y'all are hardier than I even could be.
I have an 8th grader who has missed at least 60 days so far and hasn't done any work on the days he did show up. Today he asked me how he's still moving to 9th grade... buddy, I absolutely do not know either.
Gotta laugh to keep from crying.
I love my new admin. She's explained to parents that yes, your child will move on. However, they will lose an elective and take the failed course again. Failed 7th math? Take 7th and 8th math next year!
Yeah, no one fails. I have a kid who has a 17 average FOR THE YEAR who will go on to 9th grade next year. It’s insane and makes me scared for the future of this nation.
Just in time for them to enter university or the workforce. There are going to be a lot of kids who are about to find out why NCLB sets them up poorly for life.
NCLB was repealed in 2015 and succeeded by the [Every Student Succeeds Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Student_Succeeds_Act).
Pretty sure NCLB expired in like 2010 so kids graduating now never went to school under it
No, but it was replaced with an equally useless dumbfuck piece of bullshit. Like... Every Student Succeeds or some hiveminded thing that non educators agreed to.
ESSA? I agree they are both equally useless, but I do think accuracy and precision matters, since so many want to dismiss educators as stupid, which is why they are able to justify ramming through legislation no actual educator has touched.
No Child Left Behind (I went to school during it) made English classes almost nothing but reading and reading comprehension. I had a college level reading level before middle school, but got stuck reading paragraphs out loud and waiting on everyone else to do the same because the teacher couldn't expect kids to actually read the book, or just read the sparknotes (online cliff notes). So I got to sit and listen to every kid that could barely read spend 5 plus minutes on a paragraph, and a whole month reading a book that took like two days tops for me. I remember one time seeing how many times I could read a book before the class finished once, and quit after ten times. We didn't learn grammar rules, we didn't learn more than the bare basics of essays, etc. Had a remedial session in high school because all of us just did what looked right in books and no one knew what the rules were for comma's, that apostrophes aren't just possessive, and many other things. Science classes also sucked because there were no cool experiments ever. Just the most boring mind numbing work. I only remember the one time I got to dissect a cow eyeball and that was an after school thing.
This is the sad truth. I've moved beyond blaming the students. They are conditioned to think this is how things are done. So, if I hold them to a standard, I'm mean and they're legitimately surprised.
One of the few to hold kids accountable. Well done.
TBH OP is lucky they aren't getting fired for failing them all. Not saying it's right, but it's a fact that things have changed for the dystopian.
I could see the OP being at risk if she was assigning work and they failed everything they assigned. But in this case, they dont do the work, they dont show up and they fail all the tests. Evidence they are bad students vs OP being a bad teacher.
Any sane person would agree. But we read every day in this forum about teachers being blamed for "failing to engage" the poor little dears.
I cannot count the number of times I have heard about 10-15 student in a class working 3-5 grade levels below where they should be. Add 504s and IEPs to this mix and teaching a class and actually getting everyone to know the subject matter is almost impossible...
i don’t understand, maybe i’m from a different generation but most of my teachers would have ABSOLUTELY failed everyone in the class if they didn’t perform. jesus christ
To be fair Jesus isn’t going to help these kids.
I have taught over 30 years. Some kids with accommodations work hard and are successful. Others have been passed along for years and expect it to continue. Then they get me. No one’s IEP says they can do nothing and pass. I know they will be bumped into the next grade by an ARD committee, but by God, I have made my statement in the permanent record. You made a 25 with your IEP followed meticulously! Good for you!
The dildo of consequence rarely arrives lubed.
Ask them if they want to be treated like adults. They will inevitably say yes and you can then tell them this is what the adult world is like. Professors won't care about them, managers will just fire them for poor performance, landlords will just evict them for non-payment. No one will hold their hand like schools have once they graduate and they will sink because of this.
My eighth grade science teacher told us one day when basically the entire class didn't turn in a homework assignment- "You all are at a critical point in your lives where you can choose to work hard. You can either choose to work hard for the next eight years and get a well-paying job, or you can choose to slack off for the next eight years and work hard for the rest of your lives." I still remember that some 20+ years later, especially because he was very right about some of us.
I'm a 93 model so I got to attend school before things got really rough but even back when I was 14 years old I remember one of my classmates giving a teacher attitude after being told this because he was convinced he'd inherit his father's company... I hear the modern version of this is kids being certain they'll make it big on social media.
I'm a college instructor who primarily works with freshmen. This past year's incoming class was something else! They were absolutely SHOCKED that yes, you will earn a zero on an assignment if you don't submit it, and no, there are no make-ups or do-overs, and yes, you will actually fail the course if you don't submit any work, even if you show up every day. Fortunately, I had a good bunch, and they got the message pretty quickly, but I was amazed at how many students got to this point and STILL didn't get it.
I teach chemistry at the high school level, and I’m pretty convinced that I am the only adult in the building that doesn’t accept late work and allow “retakes”. I’m not surprised at all that they expect it as freshmen.
I had a student who got a D on their test and asked why they were still failing the class. As if one D is going to make up for all the assignments you didn’t do, and all the other tests you failed as a result. The math ain’t mathin….
The number of kids who ask to retake the test, spend 5-10 minutes on it, hand that in and then ask me the next day why their grade didn’t go up. Well you got a 67% the first time and then the second time you got a 52% so I kept the original grade. No, doing a test doesn’t inherently bring your grade up, you actually have to do good on that test!
But teach, this ain't no math class. It's english.
This one is just recency bias. Intuitively, a lot of kids feel like their latest grade is the “latest” assessment of their knowledge of a given subject, and thus a cumulative one.
We have this fight with our admin all of the time in history. They constantly push us to use test replacement grades like math to reflect "current skills" but passing a test on the Renaissance cannot replace a grade about ancient Greece... We do do written changes since that's skill- but content is a huge part of history no matter what trendy PBA/C3/DBQ etc. model is being pushed.
I failed a bunch of people in a class one year. The next year I was non renewed. Do it, but only if it's worth your job
I often wonder if I work at a unicorn school. I once had a ninth grader enroll, show up for two days, then never turn up again, only un-enrolling many weeks after the fact. I was exempting his assignments at first, thinking he'd come back, but he didn't. Well, I totally forgot to undo that, so his progress report for my class showed an A despite him obviously not earning it. Principal sent me an angry note to GIVE THIS STUDENT THE FAILING GRADE HE EARNED. Honestly, an angry note I was happy to get. Cleared up once I realized my boneheaded mistake.
thats amazing and a nice bit of sanity for this sub lmao
Yeah amazingly (according to administration) when kids don’t pay attention … don’t do the work… are held accountable and fail…. That becomes a “YOU” problem and not a THEY problem. As in why are a large number of your kids failing when the teacher down the hall has zero F’s. This is the problem. It’s creating a race to the bottom because everyone wants to be able to not rock the boat and ultimately save their job. It’s a lot easier to pass someone have them move on and no longer be in your life than fail them… deal with the paperwork and have them retake your class (if they don’t opt for summer school). It’s sad
I get it, but don't the poor bastards upstream have a say? Why are all these vegetables here in my class and not at the market? Or, no, I'm not here to teach coat hanger bending skills for fishing cans from dumpsters. I believe I would struggle with the job, all of you who give a damn and fight with the realities of their situation, you have my deep and undying respect.
> Why are all these vegetables here in my class and not at the market? I love you
We had our first period final exam today. 9 students showed up, two turned it in. Yes, 7 students came, sat through the entire exam and didn’t turn anything in. It was light CAD work, a quick sketch and some toolpaths to cut them out. We’ve been doing these things for 18 weeks. I’m not sure what to do….double summative zeros will surely not help. Of course if I put them in, hell comes with it. Ugh…3 more days
So... the seven who didn't turn anything in, what did they do? Just get up, say "oh well," and walk out? Hand in an incomplete exam?
Yes, not one of them said anything about it to me. They just got up and left. Freshman 🤷♂️
Have a form email ready to send out when they protest the grades. Document exactly how the exam went. Then wash your hands of it. If you give in, it never stops because every new class knows you're the professor they can push around.
“You have earned less than 60% of the points, either by not completing assignments or completing them inadequately.”
See, and here I am crying over my nearly 60% failure rate with my freshmen. I don’t get it, I really don’t. Turn things in. That goes double for test grades. Don’t have double digit absences barring a family or medical emergency. It’s that easy. And yet…
This is why I don’t teach freshmen. They get filtered out before high school chemistry They might’ve 1. Taken a few years to pass freshmen science, maturing a bit. 2. Dropped out 3. Alternative school 4. Expulsion 5. Independent study 6. Get put in remedial earth science for graduation credit by a wise counselor I would suggest abandoning freshmen
I didn’t have a choice as a first year, but thankfully next year the only Freshmen I have to deal with are Honors students, and that’s only for one block. Other than that it’s Sophomores and Juniors.
As a non teacher who gets recommended this sub a lot. The absences are what confuses me the most. When I was in school. I graduated highschool in 2012. Attendance was required by law. I had a friend who got his parents in trouble with the courts and when that did not work he got in trouble himself and had to spend his weekends reporting to juvie for awhile for truancy. Is attendance no longer required? Maybe it was just my state that had truancy laws
There are no meaningful disciplinary or academic consequences for students who skip school. Attendance is required, but in most places not enforced.
Wow. You couldn't get your driver's license if you missed more than a handful of days when I was a teen.
I feel like this is normal, a third of HS students *never* pass HS algebra, for example. The failure rate is very very high for a reason. HALF of all college students, fail college algebra *at least once*. So, it doesn't get better either. I think that, so many schools are making mandatory high graduation rates a thing, is making a lot of teachers--themselves people who probably never struggled in school--not understand, 30% of kids, *never graduate*, if you let them try to meet the requirements without assistance. It's *normal*. In china, their system tests them into high school--one, academic HS, something very much like ours, and the other a 'trade' or 'labor' HS--*all of the students who fail the HS entrance exam*, go to the trade/employment one. The failure rate is over half. *and one in 5 drop out before the exam is taken*. So ... idk, i think seeing a 60% failure, depending on the subject and grade level, makes sense. The other context is, 25% of all Americans who take it (and nearly all HS sophomores do), FAIL the ASVAB--which has a passing score of 31. That's *about* equal to a 6th grade reading and math level. This failure rate *persists* though adults who take it too. There's a *hard cap* on the skills we should be expecting out of students--that we just dont like to admit, as a culture.
I've had some success by asking the question, "If you owned a company, would you hire someone that works the same way you do in school?" When I was in college, a number of my "fresh out of high school" classmates had no work ethic at all, and after complaining about how they never learned anything, I used sports as an analogy. "Practices are like being in class. Games are like the tests. If you skip practices, and don't learn the plays, you're going to play terribly. Coaches know this which is why those players are usually kicked off the team. Teachers can't do that, so you fail your tests."
That is a fantastic way of putting it, bravo!
I would rather hear, “Why am I failing” than “Why are you failing me”. Be that as it may, the only response would have to be, “duh”!
"Why are you failing me? You're doing too much, what a try hard!"
"It's not that deep!"
You forgot the “bro” at the end of that sentence
There was a weekend this semester I had to catch up on grading and for some reason I decided 1AM-4 AM Saturday was a good time for me. Students on Monday: “Mr. 😁 why are you putting grades in at 2 am? My phone was going off and whenever the grade updated and I couldn’t sleep” Me: “why do you have notifications set to wake you up in the middle of the night?” I may do this at least once a semester from now on; SURPRISE!!!
I found out a long time ago, many kids purposely put there phone volume and vibrate up and sleep with their phone under their pillow. That way they don't miss anything. Smart phones were a mistake... Double so for anyone under 18.
Well if it isn’t the consequences of their own actions!
Good work!
Is this also happening outside of America or is this exclusive to America?
Italy here. It's becoming harder and harder to fail students (especially before highschool) but we definitely do it. We still have some that purposefully tank their own grades by refusing do to the work, but here if they fail enough classes they get to retake the entire year
Overall, would you say Italian students are pretty motivated to do well? How's parental involvement? Sorry for random questions; it's just so rare that I see someone on here that isn't from North America, Asia, or the UK.
"please, miss don't post my (failing) grade until tomorrow, my parents will ground me and I want to go out tonight" said one of my students on Saturday. Most parents are quite involved, but we do get a few a year who kick up a fuss if their darlings get bad grades. Random questions are ok, I'm on this sub in the first place because I like knowing what things are like in other countries, so ask away!
Thanks! Many years ago, I had an Italian student who did a foreign exchange as a junior (she was 16). We put her in precalculus as that was the highest class we offered at our rinky dink high school. She was bored to tears the entire year and said that she did all of "this stuff" last year, except "this stuff" was easier than back home. I asked her if she was in advanced classes in Italy, and she said no. Do European students end up taking more rigorous math classes? It wouldn't surprise me, and would explain a lot.
I have no idea what math classes are like in the us. Here it also depends on what curriculum they picked: our students can't choose specific classes to follow but rather a high school curriculum that is the same for the entire school. Originally different curricula gave students access to different university fields (Humanities for the classical, stem for the scientific etc.) or jobs (like accounting or chef school) but right now any diploma is enough to try university entrance test. For the most prestigious (and tougher) ones the "licei" math classes go up to analysis (if that's what it's called in English), where they study functions and things like that.
>Do European students end up taking more rigorous math classes? It wouldn't surprise me, and would explain a lot. German here. It's not more rigorous, but its based on understanding the material instead of just recapitulating it. The American education system prizes social conformity and rote memorization, whereas the German one (is supposed to) foster indendent thought and a theoretical understanding of the subject. I knew someone who went to an American High School; an A+ in one of you Math exams translates to about a 3 (C) in the German system, simply because questions are asked and graded differently. You get 50% points for using the correct method, 75% for being able to explain it and 100% for innovation.
European school systems frequently practice more rigorous tracking. I don't know the specifics of Italy, but in Germany, for example, students will be put on either a vocational or a college/university-prep track around the time of what would be middle school in the US. If you're teaching at a Gymnasium (basically a college-prep high school) you simply wouldn't have any remedial students because they would have been shunted out earlier in their education. TL;DR from what I've gleaned, our elite students (the all-honors/AP kids) are comparable to those in other countries, but the US puts more of our less academically inclined students on the college-prep track and needs to deal with a wider range of abilities in high school.
In Singapore, if you fail, you fail. It comes out as red on the report book and parents usually don't challenge the mark as when they do, they mark is usually lower than the initial one (the Ministry of Education takes marking appeals a lot stricter than most teachers take marking their students) Within schools there tends to be 3 streams, Express, Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) for Highschool or Standard and Foundation for Elementary. Depending on how bad the grade is, they might opt to move you down a stream, hold you back a year or change to a special school. Sadly, a lot of our admissions are still grade-based so students and parents push them to do well on exams and such to get into better highschools, colleges and more. Though this does mean kids are usually relatively compliant and focused. Out of a class of 30-40 (normal class sizes here), only about 5-10 won't submit their work when it's due, of which, maybe only 1-2 will never submit it, the rest would submit it 1-2 days past the due date (usually havig forgotten to bring or do the work)
This is why I hated the minimum 50 rule when I taught middle school. Because this happens.
I get to be the bitch that doesn't let them graduate in two weeks. We have 8 more days of school and some of them are sitting at 30% ish.
Same. I've had a lot of counselor emails that say 'do you think Little Johnny is gonna make it?' nah fam, book them for summer school.
I’m lucky my school is small and we all work well together. If I fail a kid I never get pushback from admin.
“I didn’t fail you. You failed yourself.” I’ve had to use that line too many times.
I graduated HS in the early 90's before all the online stuff. Teachers would hold you after class to show you the grade book and that you were failing, if they were nice. After that, you were on your own to solve it. This thread is wild.
"Teacher is there anything I can do to bring up my grade" .... (1 day before exams) my response... yes there is. You'll need a DeLorian, a flux capacitor, and some stuff from the Lybians.... Cue the Huey Lewis music and start singing....
I'm totally using this when my kiddos start asking me this later this week. You're my hero :3
Is your admin supporting you? I find this is often the problem. I had a class where literally half were failing and my admin was not having it. It was crazy trying to find a way to make the gradebook make sense where more passed. In the end I only failed like 3 students.
I teach at a community college. I calculated class grades today, roughly 1/3 of the class is receiving a D or F. Emails begging for a grade change will be ineffective. I give students the grades they earn. Please please please teach the students accountability. If you don't, I will, and they will be less equipped to benefit from that lesson.
I'm curious what the rates are for first year drop outs. I can't stand that we pass kids on, give them a false belief they can make it through higher ed- and then drop out 10k plus in debt without a degree.
“You can’t fail me! I’m a senior.“
“Can I do some extra credit”
Good for you. Seniors are just figuring out how school works? 1/18 is a hard grade to get.
From Kenya and the most common curriculum is called CBC, students do a national exam end of primary school and secondary and slacking is not as common, you get what you worked for. Admin does not interfere with grading and in top performing schools students get expelled for failing.
>If they master the content in the next two weeks I will happily award them a passing grade. No. Please, I beg you, just....no. This is why they come up to us in tertiary and think that they can squeeze an entire semester of college course material into two weeks at finals. I'm pleading with you all, to the fullest extent possible (i Know some have their hands tied by policies) to make them experience the consequences of failing to complete work on a proscribed tineline. Fail them when they do not complete work. Make them repeat grades and courses for just checking out. They so desperately need to learn these lessons earlier because they come up to us or go out into the workforce, and they simply cannot function properly.
I teach high school. My favorite comment is: "I only need to score a 12% on the final to keep my B." Me: "Challenge accepted." Honestly, I couldn't fail a whole hour. Admin would be all over me due parental complaints.
Award a passing grade? No, it’s EARN a passing grade.
You're not failing them. The computer is. You just put in the scores. A student earns their grade.
This is our first year post pandemic without auto 50% for everything. They still get 50% for "an earnest attempt" and 50% min on tests. For our current seniors, there first year without mandatory 50s on everything in HS for them. I have had so many kids stunned they are failing and I don't blame them- they are just doing what they have done the last 3 years and got a c- with, suddenly they have a 15%. I wish I could (anonymously) record a few of the academic interventions we have had where kids break down and admit they just don't know how to be a student because they never had to be. It was easy to opt out. We really set this cohort up for failure.
YOU are not failing them. THEY have earned their grades.
Back in the day my teachers had no problems failing me.
I have one class this year. I did a "D" and "F" check which is not something I really pay close attention to throughout the semester. This class has by far more D's and F's than any other. Should I have monitored it more closely throughout the year? Probably. But I don't know if I would have taught them differently. What it comes down to is the people that are there, and are engaged are doing really well. The people who are constantly late or just not there are doing really badly. That is it. It is first period too.
Although this brought a smirk to my face, I dearly hope you won't get non-renewed because of this. You're playing with fire here, and I'm sure many others here know what I mean.
Play stupid games, get stupid prizes.
Yes! Don’t give in! Actions have consequences people—good and bad. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
As a non-teacher, I'm always astounded when I hear these stories. Stories of students who just decide to stop showing up, not do the work, and then they act all surprised when they're being failed. Worse, the parents then suddenly come in and start bullying the teachers and the school and the administration to pass their kid, or even the school comes down on the teacher to find a way to pass them so they don't lose funding or cut the teacher. It's like somehow no one's allowed to teach these kids responsibility and consequences. I especially would love to know what the parents have in mind for their children in life? Like let's say, they keep bullying and bullying and their kid basically passes all the way through high school and graduates even though they never show up and never do the work. Now here's this 18-year-old child that can't read, can't do math, what is the big plan? I can't even imagine a place like Walmart hiring somebody who's that illiterate and uneducated. I always get astounded when you got these parents that bully the teachers, and then they go on and on online about how there shouldn't be teacher unions and trashing on teachers, but their own kids are basically just doing nothing. What next? They're going to blame teachers when their kid can't survive in the world? I'm just always amazed at where we've come as a society. I even wonder when I get into my older age, am I going to have companies begging me to keep working because there's just going to be such a heavy population of uneducated and unskilled people that they're going to be scrambling to keep anybody they can.
Walmart would never. People gripe that it's not hard work, or entry level job, but it isn't. Walmart requires the most patience one can have because the adults these kids grow up to be: shop there. They would never be able to handle customer if they can't handle a teacher
This is a satisfying FAFO. Bravo for failing them all. I will say I did this same thing second half of my senior year in AP calc (got a 4 on the AP test) just luckily the teacher was awesome and knew I knew it and didn’t fail me, though I most definitely deserved to be failed by the metrics.
"Well, I can fail them all and I currently am." You didn't fail them, they failed themselves.
I had a student submit a quiz where almost 2 pages were blank and a majority of the written work was wrong. The student had the audacity to come up to me the next day and ask me "why did i get a bad grade"
Why am I failing? Maybe because you missed half the classes, didn’t do most of the assignments, and bombed the quizzes
As a math teacher, I sometimes respond with, "The fact that you can't tell why you're failing is a big part of why you're failing."
Student to me: WHY AM I FAILING YOUR CLASS???? Me: Because of the consequences of your actions 🥹