a Middle School Physical Education Teacher
Rising Star
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They get the grade they earned. You would be failing the kids if you lowered your expectations.
Rising Star
That is what my teacher neighbor says. "They had opportunity, guidance, and instruction."
I am feeling the same…wait… you are PE and it’s that bad. I’m on the …contact parents via text messaging system at my school everyday. If they block it, we have a secondary and a third way.
Is the work health related? Or sports rules related?
If you tried all those ways, you did NOT fail your students. My only suggestion without knowing what about the assignments are, give your students a survey. Figure out from your curriculum what they will do and what they won’t do. The won’t stuff will need further ideas. But you can do the things they will do until you figure something out.
These students seems like they feel that they have a choice not to do things. They do not understand what consequences are. Information builds. I don’t blame teachers. We never know when students become inspired. We just keep trying things until they are inspired.
You are doing it right! Good luck!
Totally get that. My kids can do class activities to earn fake money towards a class store and they love it. I’m a reading support teacher with very small groups. They can also earn towards treat days. You’d think they’d be happy to do simple nongraded (my class is pass/fail) assignments. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to focus and just do the work during class. In small groups you can’t hide it when you’re not working. This year has been a challenge already.
I'm not sure what subject you teach, or how much flexibility you have. Here are some things I have done. Middle School is a hard age: they are scattered people, many of them "know" that the grades don't matter (failing 1-3 classes has no effect on promotion here, high grades have little visible effect.), and I taught technology so the grades-conscious students were less so for me. My tech class was not all projects, I was big into current events and learning about what actually is going on in the world in addition to shop projects. Enough context!
1) I had different types of assignments: projects, tests. and vlasswork. For class work, I tried to have a lot of them per quarter (>20) and I would drop the lowest 1 or 2. Stated rationale was that I didn't want to measure them on their worst day. Privately, one missing assignment didn't drive me crazy. I did not do this dropping until the last minute so the missing assignment would show up in their average until then. If someone got no benefit from that drop, I might give one extra credit point on their quarter grade. (I only told them of this policy at the end of the quarter, if at all)
2) I gave out grade reports halfway through the quarter. I showed the calculations of an imaginary student and what 1 or 2 missed assignments did to an otherwise decent grade.
3) for projects (long things) turning in the paperwork was part of the rubric, but there were a lot of observations I made along the way so that I could give them a valid grade even if they didn't turn it in. I had seen them do the work.
4) parent communication helped sometimes. At least nobody should have been blindsided. I often called saying "Here's what's going on with little Johnny's grade. It's all fixable, but the time is short. I don't want you to have a heart attack over it. But maybe Johnny should." Usually got a laugh.
5) can you get them to check the bottom of their backpacks?
You have NOT Failed your students. They’ve failed themselves. You’ve tried everything you know how to try. You can’t make people want to learn. You will unfortunately have to fail them. Better they learn this lesson at the middle school than in high school and life.
Rising Star
I guess this is true. Throughout the grading period I do at least 3 days of "work on missing assignments" and rewards for those who have no missing assignments.
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I think some kids just don’t enjoy schoolwork and not much can change it
Rising Star
I think you are totally correct!