Dear Auntie Siobhan: She Won't Come to Class, but She Won't Leave Me Alone!

by Siobhan Curious

Published July 21, 2009 @ 05:42AM PT

This week, Auntie Siobhan (Siobhan Curious from Classroom as Microcosm) is here at Change.org to resolve your teaching dilemmas for you.  Is something troubling you as you prepare for the coming school year?  Write to Auntie Siobhan at siobhancurious@gmail.com.

Today: Why do we all have to suffer because one student won't come to class?

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Dear Auntie Siobhan,

I have been teaching English composition and literature at the college level for a few years now, and usually classroom management is pretty easy for me. Every once in a while there's a student who tests the limits, of course, but I can take most things in stride.

This past semester, however, I encountered a student whose mission, it seems, was to drive me nuts.

As I do in all my courses, I reviewed the attendance policy on the first day of class - my college has a universal attendance policy which prohibits teachers from failing a student on the basis of non-attendance, but we try to stress to students that missing more than a couple of classes puts them in serious jeopardy. Of course, the problem is that this policy has no teeth, so it becomes the teachers' individual responsibility to ensure attendance. In my courses, I use reading quizzes and other small assignments, and make it clear to students that I will explain major assignments in class as well, so their attendance is recommended.

On the other hand, I also present students with a fairly comprehensive schedule, so they know when essays and other major assessments are planned, and this where the student - let's call her Tina - found her loophole.

Tina attended the first few classes of the semester and the stopped coming to class. I assumed that she had dropped the course, or was planning to - until she showed up on the day of our first scheduled in-class essay. It had been so long that I didn't recognize her at all! I reminded the entire class that their essays would be returned the following week, with my feedback, and that each student needed to schedule a meeting with me to review that feedback before rewriting the essay for marking.

Tina came to the next class, but approached me at the beginning of class to say that she had another appointment and would have to leave early. She collected her essay and disappeared. She did not make an appointment to see me, but she did rewrite her essay - not surprisingly, she did not really understand my feedback, and given that she had not attended any of the preparatory classes, her essay failed.

When she did not return to class, I again assumed that she had dropped the course, which was fine with me. But then, when the research paper assignment was given, I started receiving e-mails from her, asking for guidance for the assignment.

At first, thinking that she had turned a new leaf, I responded warmly, and gave her some guidance, but suggested that she'd get a lot more out of the workshops we were doing in class. She assured me that she'd be there - but she wasn't. The e-mails kept coming, despite my increasingly curt replies. I eventually told her that I would not respond to any further requests for help on the assignment because I felt I was essentially teaching my course twice - once in class, and once on line, for an audience of one.

This pattern continued, with her ingratiating e-mails and my curt replies, for the rest of the semester. The last straw was the oral presentation, which was done in pairs. Tina assured me, and her partner, that she would attend classes that she did not, that she would share research that she did not, and that she would prepare the PowerPoint presentation that she did not. Her poor partner was left on presentation day with nothing to present and no partner to present with.

I did, in fact, take her partner aside a week or two before the presentation to see how things were going, and although she seemed a little worried about Tina's work, she believed Tina would come through in the end; personally, I think she was more worried about presenting alone than she was about her partner pooping out on her.

So I'm left with two questions - how could I have nipped Tina's pattern in the bud, and what should I have done for her presentation partner?

I look forward to hearing from you and your readers!

Sincerely,

Jane Austen

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Dear Jane:

I also work in Quebec's college system, where we're not allowed to give grades for attendance.  Many of our students, especially those just out of high school, are over the moon to discover that no one's going to punish them directly for not coming to class, and are delighted when they test the "attendance policies" and find that they're basically meaningless.  So they don't come to class.

Sometimes there are consequences for their absences - failed assignments, failed courses, irritated teachers and angry abandoned classmates.

In some cases, there are no serious consequences at all.

Like you, I use indirect measures of attendance to encourage students to show up.  I allot 10-15% of their grade for "in-class assignments."  (This functions as a "participation" grade, but I've stopped calling it "participation," because that lends itself to misinterpretation.)  Each individual or group hands in physical evidence of their in-class work, like a sheet of answers or notes, and I spot-check it and give a few brief comments (or, if I'm very pressed for time, just sign it across the bottom and mark it as "complete.")  They can't make up this work outside of class unless they have some sort of documentation for their absence.  Each assignment winds up constituting around 0.5% of their overall course mark.

For many students, this grade is a strong incentive to come to class, and it's a great benefit to struggling students who work hard: they receive an acknowledgment, in the form of a good "in-class assignments" grade, that they did everything they could to make progress.

Just last semester, I had a student - let's call her Paulina - who attended occasionally until midterm, and then disappeared.  When I asked one of her friends if she knew where she was, the friend said that Paulina lived far from the school and found it too difficult to show up for an 8 a.m. class.  Paulina missed a couple of important tests and received just above 0% for her "in-class assignments" grade, but she handed in a reasonably good final paper and passed the course.

Was I pleased with this outcome?  No; it galled me that a student who couldn't be bothered to come to class was emerging with the same grade as students who'd struggled and worked hard all term.  Was I prepared to do anything about it?  No.  Paulina's grades added up to a pass.  Bully for her.

Given that we're not entitled to grade students for their attendance, I think we need to give up trying to control it.  We can still put incentives in place, but then I think we have to let go, and let them sink or swim based on the actual work they produce.

We can certainly refuse to "tutor" them privately on the work they've missed, or to ease any consequences they encounter.  We can tell them, after a certain point, that we won't communicate with them at all unless they present themselves in person (that's what I might have said to Tina).  In the end, though, we need to let them learn, or not learn, from the results.  In Tina's case, it sounds like that's exactly what you did.

The consequences for Tina's oral presentation partner are more troubling.

Group work is always tricky.  I rarely require students to work in groups for their major assignments, although I often give them the option of doing so.  If they choose to work in a group, then they are responsible for managing their own group dynamic.  If they come to me with problems and there's enough time to make adjustments, I help them to do so when possible.  And if I have in fact required group work (especially if I've assigned the groups), I try to be flexible when group members let each other down.

Your letter says that the oral presentation was "done in pairs," so I assume that the pair work was required and not optional.  You don't mention whether Tina's partner chose or was assigned to her.  I think these factors all come into play.

If Tina's partner was required to do the presentation with Tina and Tina didn't come through, I would argue for making accommodations for her.  It sounds like you were trying to do that when you pulled the partner aside ahead of time and asked how it was going; in fact, I think you could argue that it was the partner's responsibility to contact YOU if there were issues.

Did you offer her the possibility of doing her presentation alone, and she resisted?  If so, I think you did all you could.  If the partner hadn't figured out, by the day of the presentation, that Tina could not be counted on, then she was refusing to deal with the problem.  Finding herself with "nothing to present" showed a remarkable lack of foresight and judgment.

That said, in your shoes, I'd probably offer the partner a compromise - the possibility of presenting something on her own a few days later, and earning a reduced grade for her effort.  This strikes a balance - you don't want to punish the partner for Tina's irresponsibility, but you do need to hold her accountable for those aspects of the problem she could have controlled.

Of course, in the "real world" outside the classroom, we are often placed in positions where we need to compensate for others' shortcomings, and this is as good a time as any for Tina's partner to learn that.  However, given your intimate understanding of Tina's behavior, you might want to cut those who have to deal with her some slack.

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Readers:  What do you think of this advice?  How would you deal with Tina?  What would you do for her partner?

Do you have a question about teaching or learning for Auntie Siobhan?  Write with your concerns!  You can contact her at siobhancurious@gmail.com, or visit her blog, Classroom as Microcosm.

Image by Willi Heidelbach