In this day and age it’s common—and in some schools and districts even mandated—to allow students to make up anything and everything they want.
Not happy with your test grade? No problem, just take it again. Forgot your homework? Turn it in whenever you wish. Missed the due date? As long as it’s in by the last day of the semester, you’re gold.
No lost credit. No penalty. No worries.
But allowing students to retake tests, make up assignments, and ignore deadlines is something you should never do.
Here’s why:
They fall behind.
Your students can’t stay up to date with your current lessons when they haven’t mastered the previous and prerequisite material. Good teaching requires building higher level skills and concepts upon their lower forms.
Allowing make ups and retakes guarantees that they’ll fall further and further behind. No teacher worth their salt can allow this to happen.
They cheat.
It’s reality. Students who take advantage of extensions and do-overs often wait until the last possible moment when the only choice is to cheat or copy.
Some teachers even legitimize it by letting them test with an open book or cell phone or allowing other ways of lowering the bar knee high to a grasshopper.
They learn laziness.
By giving chance after chance, you’re very effectively teaching students to be lazy, undisciplined, and unemployable. Discipline is learned through hard deadlines.
It’s learned from adults who hold students accountable to their responsibilities. Letting them off the hook is damaging to them. Good teaching requires you to care enough to make the tough decisions.
They become depressed.
Without goals, objectives, and due dates with real stakes, life very quickly loses meaning. It devolves into a constant chase for cheap dopamine hits.
It becomes social media scrolling, pornography, violent videos, and gaming. Meaningless vapor that in the end crushes self-worth. Discipline equals meaning and a chance at enduring happiness.
They become entitled.
Without standards to meet, students become entitled. They begin to believe that everything can be put off, ignored, or negotiated to their liking. Rent, car payments, jobs, relationships.
They feel as if they don’t have to be committed to anything. Hence, they’re shocked and outraged when the coach benches them for missing practice.
They make excuses.
Allowing chance after chance encourages students to justify for their failures, mistakes, and ill preparedness rather than taking responsibility and actually learning from them.
To this way of thinking, an F doesn’t mean they failed. It means that they don’t test well, they didn’t get enough help, or the type of exam doesn’t match their strengths.
A Gift
Taking a stand on deadlines and refusing to offer retakes and do-overs can make a big difference in your students’ future academic performance.
It can improve their sense of responsibility, discipline, and commitment. It can help prepare them to be a valuable contributor to their community and ready them for a career in which they’re needed and appreciated.
In other words, it’s healthy for them.
Although a gift your students may not understand or appreciate until years later, holding them to a standard required for success in school and beyond is nonetheless precious.
Showing a level of care and leadership rare in today’s world.
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