The OP’s DD is a college freshman, but agree that “I missed that” or “This was never explained” won’t fly in real life.
There must be something missing from the equation (or I’m dense), but my back-of-the envelope calculation came up with an 89 for a final grade, since presumably one of the zero’s was the lowest grade dropped. Since the college in question has +/- (although perhaps the professor stated that only whole letter grades are given), an argument could be made for a B+.
Please kill me if I ever get that involved in my kid’s grades in college. They could tell me her sob story but I am not going to ever contact anyone from her college.
I have never talked to my D19’s teachers in HS.
Sometimes the best lessons are learned the hard way.
@gpo613 me, neither. I listen, sometimes offer advice for organizing themselves. My kids know that I don’t abide grade-grubbing. When they were little, they often were offered silly extra credit in their cyberschool and I would never let them do it. The learning should be its own reward. I would always ask them what they could be doing instead of extra credit and it always turned out there were better learning opportunities to be had.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but I got through college (I only had a poor single mother) without ever once talking to my mother about my grades. She had severe health and addiction issues, so I am not sure it would have mattered anyway. Grades were my sole problem to figure out (I was on athletic scholarship, so I suppose if my grades ever were low enough the athletic department would have been notified and that would have been a mess, but that never happened). The grades belonged to the guy in the mirror - as did paying tuition, finding enough to eat, hitching rides home, sleeping on the locker room floor before dorms opened, succeeding in athletics at the highest level of NCAA Division 1, and so on. My two kids - one a Shipman Scholar at Michigan and another an honors grad from Princeton - well, I never asked for their grades or checked on them either - ever. Their grades and accomplishments were their own - likely one reason they did well - they had to own the process, not me. Worrying about their grades just wasn’t my role as a parent - i hopefully taught them notions of cause and effect and consequences by the time they arrived at college (which I did entirely pay for). It is good to be a concerned parent, but maybe the best answer is to let your daughter fight this battle on her own. And I have difficulty believing a single B in a class will impact her future. If she is capable, and by your description she clearly appears to be so, she will ultimately rise to the level of performance to which she is comfortable - which indeed may be at a very high level.
Ski, my understanding of middle college is this kid might be 14. Why did OPcall this middle college? I only know the NY State programs where it’s a form of DE. Guess Ineed to read old posts.
What I fear is that in alienating the professor she would lose that great recommendation from them that would be even more important in her research application because it would be there where it could be explained how brilliant she did in the class (despite having a B). I would be way more concerned about the relationship than the grade.
@lookingforward The danger of so many people telling their own stories - @CCtoAlaska 's kid is the middle college student, not the OP’s, unless I overlooked something.
@skieurope You are correct - she will end up with a B+ once the lowest grade gets dropped. And yes, my daughter is in college.
@willowglen I too had a similar situation (minus the health issues) growing up and didn’t have any input from my mom. Since all was done on my own, I didn’t realize that I probably would have had my undergrad fully paid for based on financial need at Cornell and instead went to my state school on a full merit scholarship. I only found out about the grading issue because my daughter was upset when I called her and she told me what happened. I have NOT been keeping up with any of her grades in college - that is her responsibility. And yes, in the big picture, she will accomplish her career goals, but for the immediate goals of research next semester and summer, this will affect her.
@CCtoAlaska Well, my daughter felt that after talking to her bio prof, she won’t count on that letter of recommendation but her conversation with the biology chair went really well. She also has a good relationship with her academic advisor so those are two good relationships she will be nurturing.
Whew, thank you, ski.
The danger, also, in everyone describing something different and treating it the same.
One B won’t keep her out of med school.
But this sounds to me like a weeder course, meant to be “take no prisoners.” She needs to pick herself up and dust herself off. And definitely build her rep in the dept in positive ways.
And be prepared for other intro stem classes to also be tough, require vigilnce.
Good luck.
It blows my mind that in university where students are considered adults that professors give marks for attendance and homework. When I went to university 30 years ago that certainly wasn’t the case. If you didn’t want to go to class or do the homework that was your decision. If you ended up failing oh well. DH often treated his lectures as if they were online distance education courses. It didn’t impact his marks any, in fact he much prefers self-paced independent study (which is why is skipped class a good portion of his senior year of high school and still managed to ace his classes).
In DS19’s high school program homework has been optional for the past couple of years. You do it if you think you need more practice with the material. If you don’t then you don’t need to do it. It certainly doesn’t get marked.
@gwnorth - Agreed that back in day the entire course grade was composed of exams and finals. No homework. No attendance. No quizzes.
My daughter’s college has quizzes, homework, attendance, and two small discussion courses even have participation points. Frankly she’s grateful for all the extra opportunities because the exam means are so low. Her school just made the top 10 list for most grade DE-flation. The “extras” aren’t worth much though - 10% of the grade for most courses.
Although I’m not sure attendance was a component of your grade in this class, I’ll never forget one of my engineering professors taking a polaroid of the class one day. When asked why, he said so that if he got a call from a parent wanting to meet with him about why his student was failing the class, he could ask them to come and take a look at the picture and tell him if their student was actually in class. I can only imagine he would have done this after getting several of these calls so even way back in the day parents were getting involved in their children’s grades.
I saw no comments from the OP that indicated she was going to get involved with the school directly on her daughter’s behalf. Merely that she was looking for perspectives on whether her daughter may have a case to argue for a higher grade.
@gwnorth - I don’t remember homework and attendance in college. I am sure there were some projects and papers that had to be done, but not homework.
I still remember taking a freshman level math class as an elective second semester senior year. I took the class pass/fail. I showed up for the first day and only test days from then on out. Did the final in about half the time as most kids. I needed a blow-off class that semester because I was studying for the CPA.
Your daughter needs to start keeping her own copies (online is fine) and records of the assignments she submits. If she had done the assignments and had a record and date of on time submission, her discussion would be a very different one than it is.
As it is, she has no idea whether or not she did these assignments? No check on the assignment thing she has hanging on the wall? No notation online? No online copy of the completed assignment? Nothing.
Since she has nothing, she really doesn’t have much of a case.
In the future, she should keep records of everything…everything. Because you know…sometimes instructors DO make mistakes. If she had a record of these completed and submitted assignments, I’m betting the instructor would be all ears.
Back in the stone tablet age, my HS calculus teacher was a retired army colonel. His way or no way. No whining allowed. The favorite line was “No Mickey Mouse!” (so of course he had a huge collection of mouse ears from his students…)
No Mickey Mouse meant that we don’t/won’t do busy work in any way, shape or form.
Two tests. Midterm and final. Just like college (at the time). Calculus was college level so get used to it!
Do the homework or no. He didn’t care about homework–no grades for that. (but you didn’t want to be the person unprepared when called to perform homework problems in front of the class!). It was up to you to learn.
He was one of the toughest and best loved teachers on campus.
A typical class was 10-15 minutes of going over homework from day before. You got called up randomly to do the problem solving on previous day homework on the chalk board. No shaming if you couldn’t do it. No kudos either. No grades involved. Just a “sit down” and “next”! (and if nobody got it–then it was a review moment).
Next 15 minutes was total teaching on the next topic. No interruptions. None. Time for that later.
Rest of class–homework assigned. “Work on it with whomever you want. Talk all you want with one another.
Come see me for whatever questions you’ve got. Here I am.”
(He’d finish teaching and then go and put his feet up on his desk and lay back waiting…).
His feet would come down immediately and he’d patiently go through problems for whomever had questions.
He spent a ton of hours coaching kids. Best. ever.
@thumper1 She absolutely will do things differently moving forward but I feel she should have been given the chance when it first happened back in Oct. and not be submarined at the end of the semester. She does learn from her mistakes and this won’t happen again but as stated earlier, her grades never showed a missed assignment. And yes, she WILL be marking her posted syllabi’s assignments “completed” on all future assignments and double checking online and with the prof if nothing is posted to make sure things are posted - she has already told me this. She is the most conscientious student out there so two misses like this are rare and she has never experienced anything remotely like this before. She does have ALL her class syllabi posted on the wall next to her desk but she didn’t marked things “submitted” - she relied on Blackboard which she will never do again.
I tried to piece everything together and it looks like the missed assignment was due the weekend we (and my extended family) visited her for Family Weekend and the other missed assignement happened the week of her theater play (yes a pre-med and performing in the school play). She has been a juggler her whole life of academics, theater, and sports (she is also on the Ultimate team) so she has to stay organized to maintain high grades which up until this point, she has.
So, yes - lesson learned but learned too late to do anything about it.
This is a bummer for your student, because it doesn’t seem fair, but unfair situations are, in themselves, learning opportunities. Regardless of what happens, she will likely never miss anything like this again, and that is better training than whatever that bio assignment would have taught her.
I have two opinions. On the one hand, it is a learning opportunity and the parents should not be involved in any way shape or form. That said, I would speak to my daughter as the third party. I’d tell her, “Do what you want but here is what I would do” Then I would proceed to tell her about raising the issue with the academic dean. In addition, I would tell her how I would put the information in writing and ensure that there is a new system one which does not presume that dashes are zeros. And one that assumes the teacher reports on time.
This is a process error and needs to be corrected. If she takes the high road and wants to ensure it doesn’t happen again and pursues that vein, I think the Academic dean might also be amenable. Of course, if she needs to take another class from this professor she’ll need to consider the consequences of raising the issue above the chair. (Personally if it were half a grade, my suggestion to her would be use it as a learning experience, from an A to a B would incite me to riot so I’d be in for the fight.
@Happytimes2001 I like the idea of bringing the process error to the academic dean to assure this doesn’t happen again. I am not sure if Blackboard has its settings set as a whole by the university or if each teacher can personalize their own Blackboard settings. I am guessing after the chair talks to the bio prof, that there will be a change in the way the zeros register in Blackboard or at least something added to the syllabus stating that the Blackboard grades don’t reflect zeros for missed assignments.
@SeattleMom1 that is good to hear she has some other relationships on campus. Maybe she can avoid this professor in the future. I personally would not like a class with so many assignments - it’s just a lot of make busy work!