Or at least the school administration
My daughter is a senior in high school. Through the summer she worked up an idea for an Independent Study project for one of her class periods this year. The teacher she was going to work with helped her refine her plan and seemed to be willing to oversee the project. Then when school started she was told she couldn’t do it for credit. She has permission to be in the media center for that class period and to do the work she planned to do, she just can’t get credit for it. They did “compromise” by telling her she could use that for enrichment (basically extra credit) for her AP World History class, which is with the same teacher. The thing is, she leads the class and sets the curve most of the time anyway, so extra credit isn’t really something she needs. And a little extra credit for a year’s worth of work?
Her dad and I were pretty angry when she told us all this, and she reminded us that we’ve always told her that it’s the work that counts, not the grade. Which is true. She’s in school to get an education, not a GPA. So she’s doing the project anyway, just for the learning.
The thing is, they told her that there have been problems with IS situations in the past, with kids not doing the work but getting credit anyway. So it bugs me that she’s being deprived based on other people’s actions. And it seems that they’re casting aspersions on both her and the teacher, by suggesting they would do that.
They’ve also said they don’t have any parameters set for IS projects, but it seems that the thing to do would be to set some, rather than arbitrarily denying her this opportunity.
The other reason seems to be that they can’t let her do it if they turn other students down. Can’t make an exception for one kid, don’t you know. But they are making an exception anyway, by letting her use a class period to be in the media center unsupervised. And, as I told the counselor, if you have exceptional students, you need to make exceptions.
So I guess I’m going to have to push this a bit, and try to get them to change their minds. I plan to use the arguments I’ve listed here, and remind them that they make a huge effort to recognize student achievement. But they’ve taken one of their highest achievers, one of the best representatives of the school, and discouraged her efforts to achieve even more. They’ve tried to keep her from doing exactly what they keep saying they want their students to do, take responsibility for their own education.
Personally, I think the fact that she’s doing the project anyway says everything that needs to be said, but I don’t think they’ll see it that way.
I guess I just needed to get this off my chest, but any comments or advice (or commiseration) would be welcome.
Wish me luck.