“She’s a new teacher, no bad intent, but ditching work to go to Coachella a week before the final”
I’d think that a new teacher who did that at most high schools would the school administration to be quite irritated.
Do NOT waste your time, emotional or other energy with this. The tales I could tell about my son’s senior year of HS… The C he got in AP Chemistry (my honors undergrad major) while he got a 5 on that AP exam, taken a month before school ended. He didn’t like the way the teacher taught the class I think he said. And other grades/lack of doing homework/being the slacker he disdained the year before… Oh, he got his honors math degree and added a second major-CS in college- doing great.
There- your D’s lack of perfection is absolutely no big deal and soon to be ancient history. Please, please, do not get engaged in her college life. Trust she will do what is needed and the less you know the happier you (and she) will be. She sounds fantastic and likely will thrive in college. This does not mean perfect grades. It does mean choosing options that will educate her in so many ways including outside the classroom.
Getting old means getting wiser. You finally learn to let go of so many things that seemed so important back in the day. So, let go and enjoy having a graduating senior who has done extremely well.
I would worry more about a D who was so perfectionistic she couldn’t blow off an inconsequential thing like this.
I’m not sure what difference it makes. Either way she had to take the exam. The issue is she doesn’t know if her final grade will be an A or a B? I wouldn’t worry about it.
I overheard a couple of college students talking recently. One said they decided to take a course using the pass/fail option so if they “didn’t get an A” it would only show up as a pass on their transcript. When did a B become synonymous with failure?
It would annoy me and my daughter too because the students face repercussions if they don’t fulfill their responsibilities. It’s not right when the teachers can slack on theirs with no repercussions. That doesn’t happen super often, but it’s annoying when it does (just as, I am sure, teachers become annoyed when a student slacks). But I also wouldn’t say anything and would end up just shrugging it off.
Venting is fine, we all get frustrated when things don’t go as planned. This is especially true when it involves our children and we know how hard they worked. By Fall, when she is excited to be in college, you will look back and realize that this is inconsequential. Relax, move on.
So, if you have an “A” in the class, the teacher won’t grade the final exam to ensure that your grade doesn’t fall to a “B.” But, if you have a “B” in the class, the teacher will grade the final exam so that you could possibly bring the grade up to an “A.” And this irritates you? I would be more irritated if my kid had an “A” in the class and then made a “B” because she missed one too many questions on one test.
Am I understanding it correctly that everyone is supposed to take the exam, even if they were at 90% or more?
4th quarter of senior year with acceptance in place-- I wouldn’t care at all.
Sorry, my outrage meter just can’t seem to get going.
Congrats to your D on her great accomplishments. On to bigger and better, I say.
If she has vacations days due, I wouldn’t call that “ditching work.” At least, I don’t call it that when I take my earned vacation days. If the administration approved the vacation days, I wouldn’t begrudge them.
That said, if she promised to have an assignment graded before she left, she should have made good on that.
At our high school there is no A-, anything less than a 93 would be a B.
Get over it. If your daughter doesn’t care then you shouldn’t.
Things can get weirder in college. My child experienced a reverse snow day. The professor canceled the class because he would be a a conference. Then snow canceled his flight the day before. He reinstated the class and failure to attend penalties would be in place.
Having been a straight A student in high school myself, and understanding the risk of stress that comes from that level of perfectionism, I tried to de-emphasize the importance of grades with my kids. Instead I tried to emphsize to what extent they were learning or “growing their brains.”
Whereas I might have felt some irritation in the situation you described, I think I would have seen that as MY problem to overcome. The big picture is that your daughter will be fine no matter what, and maybe even more successful because she is less focused upon grades and more focused on what really matters.
IF, as I interpret from OP’s posts, the teacher wanted everyone to take the final regardless of their standing, here are a few thoughts:
Maybe the teacher wants the exam results from EVERYONE as part of her evaluation of how the course went, where to focus for improvements, etc. Maybe her supervisors want the results as part of evaluating HER since she is new and possibly not tenured yet (hence the old AP exam).
If the students having 90+ grades KNOW before the exam that it won’t count, then they might not even take it (why bother?) If they are told they MUST take it, they might not prepare - just answer “t = 3” to everything and leave. After all, why did OP’s daughter want to know? Probably so that she could either blow it off or not bother preparing.
It may not have occurred to the teacher at the beginning that this could be a problem, so she said she would have the grades available. Then later it occurs to her or someone else points it out. So she doesn’t put the grades in on purpose. The A students take the exam, she can grade them and get data, and it doesn’t affect their grade one way or the other. It isn’t some s-over to the students, since she didn’t have to “not count” the grade in the first place.
In my current college courses, our department does pre-and-post testing as part of OUR evaluations. I have often had one or more of my best students blow off the post-test, which is VERY bad for me and utterly nothing to them, so if you think this scenario is farfetched, you’re dead wrong.
What bothers me is HS teachers that waive finals. I don’t agree with the practice. I think schools should teach follow through.
LOL @Hanna
At my kids’ school, the Monday after the 2nd Coachella weekend, was always a ‘holiday’ which mean’t zero unexcused absences, missed tests etc. from students or teachers