Jarvis JargOnline 2005: JCEye

Jarvis JargOnline 2005: JCEye

The Death of the Deadline

Three Weeks Late? No Problem

Dominic Alford-Duguid

ESP at JCI
The Empowered Students Partnership Program Comes to Jarvis
Jason Ellis

The Death of the Deadline

Three Weeks Late? No Problem

Dominic Alford-Duguid

“I don’t think it’s doing any favours to students to pretend there are no consequences.”

If you’re wondering whether to hand in that World History or Economics essay on time, don’t worry about it. You can hand in your assignments late, and the teachers can’t do anything about it.

This good fortune is a result of a policy put in place by the Ministry of Education over two years ago, one in which the Ministry outlines a new approach to late assignments.

Instead of penalizing students for late work, the new policy allows students to hand in an assignment, whether it’s a short paragraph or an ISU, up until the moment the teacher hands back the rest of the assignments, without any penalty for having missed the deadline. The teacher has no discretion to impose a late-penalty.

The result, for example, according to Mr. Caldwell, Head of the English Department, is that 70%-80% of his assignments are now being handed in late. On the other hand, if students submit their assignment after the teacher returns the marked assignments, then they will receive a zero. Again the teacher has no discretion for hardship cases.

The philosophy behind this policy, says Jarvis’s principal Mr. Gold, is “to allow students to demonstrate an understanding of the material presented.” In other words, the skill assessment of an assignment, and thus the mark it receives, should not depend on when the assignment is handed in.

This philosophy, when made into policy, provides a convenient safety mechanism for overworked students, as it allows a little wiggle room for students suffering under the crush of several simultaneous assignments.

Almost every student at Jarvis has, by now, taken advantage of the new policy to get through a tight spot, to hand in an essay a day or two late, or put off that ISU for another weekend.
“It is reasonable that students have some extra time,” says Emma Hodgson, Grade 12.

The problem is that this freedom has become a habit with many students, to the point where they no longer give any serious weight to the actual deadlines set by the teachers. “It is a dangerous thing to become used to,” warns Thomas Buchanan, Grade 12.
“I don’t think it’s doing any favours to students to pretend there are no consequences,” says Mr. Caldwell. “I think that it may cause more problems than it solves.”

While habitual lateness is not lethal, it threatens to get those students who are planning to continue on to post-secondary education into some very hot water. While the policy may have changed in high school, the policy concerning late work in university remains the same. If the assignment comes in late, it is frequently given a zero - no excuses, no appeal.

While not a lethal habit, habitual lateness threatens to get those students who are planning to continue on to post-secondary education into some very hot water.

If our students hit university after four years of cushy deadlines, how will they survive? Doubtless many will adapt, and adapt quickly too, but a growing number of students will lack the skills and reflexes needed to organize their workload and meet deadlines.

Apart from the possible negative consequences for university students who come from high schools governed by the flexible late policy, there is also the issue of fairness. What about those students who hand their work in on time?

Under this new policy, the work of students who hand it in on time is marked the same as the work handed in late. Is it fair that students who don’t adhere to deadlines should receive the same treatment as those who made the effort to get the work in on time?
The fact is, neither option is fair.

On the one hand you have students under pressure from too much work, students who appreciate the provided wiggle room and safety net, while on the other there are students who are virtually penalized for meeting their deadlines. Is there a middle ground to be found?

While no definitive formal solution has been found (the Ministry has refused to scrap the policy), teachers have come up with a number of inventive interpretations of the policy in order to maintain some discretion, preserve students’ respect for deadlines, and try to sort out the fairness issues.

For example, for the Grade 12 English ISU this year, Jarvis’s English Department decided that teachers would take up one essay in class four days after the deadline. Any assignment handed in after that would be considered officially late, and would thus receive a zero.

Ms. Gotsis, Head of the Social Sciences and Canadian Studies Depart-ment, says that in her department the policy is based on an interpretation of the Ministry’s policy, where assignments can only be handed in late when a student provides a “reasonable and verifiable excuse.” This strategy allows the teachers to impose some sort of penalty for very overdue assignments, while still remaining within the boundaries of the policy.

This need for selective interpretation of the policy demonstrates that it is, according to Mr. Gold, “philosophically very sound, but not practically.” He doesn’t think that students should be penalized for lateness; he agrees there should be leeway, but that the literal interpretation of this philosophy is impractical and ineffective.

In the end, what this policy represents is just another attempt by the Ministry to, in effect, legislate something which has traditionally been left up to the discretion of teachers.

In the end, what this policy represents is just another attempt by the Ministry to, in effect, legislate something which has traditionally been left up to the discretion of the teachers.

“The Ministry has taken away that discretion,” says Mr. Caldwell.

It is the Ministry’s underlying distrust of the good judgement of the teachers that is the real root of teachers’ and thoughtful students’ concerns surrounding this policy.

If students were to go up to a teacher and explain that they had a lab report, an essay, and a math test all on the same day, and that there was no way that they would be able to finish an assignment by the deadline, the teacher would probably allow them to hand it in a day or two late, as is shown by the interpretation taken by the Social Sciences Department.
Most teachers bend the rules to a certain degree, and are fairly flexible on the subject of late work, in particular, if they are given enough notice.

If the Ministry of Education were to place a little more trust in the discretion of its teachers, policies such as this one would be rendered unnecessary.

ESP at JCI

The Empowered Students Partnership Program Comes to Jarvis

Jason Ellis

High schools have an image of being unsafe in modern times, but is this feeling of insecurity rampant in the halls of Jarvis?

A survey of 100 Jarvis students show that 95% feel some degree of safety, 3% feel quite unsafe, and only 2% feel very unsafe.

Jarvis ESPFrom these figures it's quite apparent that Jarvis is a fairly safe school, but how safe would students feel if they thought that no actions were being taken to uphold that safety?

One student comments, "I'd still feel safe but just not as safe as I would [normally] because I'd be worried that something could happen at any minute, you know?" This is where the ESP Program, which stands for Empowered Students Partnership, becomes essential.

The ESP Program was first developed three years ago and consists of members of the School Board, police services, and community groups. At that time there were already organizations in place to encourage safety in schools and though quite successful, they possessed one defect: they were reactive. They would only act upon events that had already occurred, which raised concerns about the effectiveness of these organizations in terms of prevention. Like the old saying goes: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," which means that there has to be a proactive approach. This idea led to the establishment of the Empowered Students Partnership.

The objective of the program is simply to encourage students to take the necessary steps to solve problems within their school. They do this through utilizing programs or by working together with higher authority, such as Safe Schools or the police, to ensure safety.

"With the ESP, the police are there as the students want them," says Mr. Gold, who is responsible for bringing the ESP Program to Jarvis and who had worked with it previously. This type of interaction between the students and the police helped to eradicate the negative perception students had of them and helped to solve many issues that bothered them.

The concern of the ESP Program doesn't just lie within safety issues. It also deals with issues concerning their health and personal well-being, such as dating, peer pressure, and drug use. "We're not here to punish people," says Ms. Syrakos, the head of the ESP Program. "We're here to provide a place where students can feel safe to bring forward the issues that affect them and then through the ESP can take steps to get rid of it."

As Brian Holder of 51 Division puts it, "It's an old concept. Who better to know what's wrong with the community than the community itself?" That is where the essence of the ESP Program lies.

What it comes down to is that there is no better cure for the issues that students face than prevention. Students are most affected by these issues, so why shouldn't they be given the power, with the cooperation of higher authority, to create incentives to solve those issues?