Extra credit was once a blessed bonus teachers bestowed upon
the very best work students produced. Today, extra credit points have taken on
an entirely new meaning.
Are your kids earning
extra credit in school?
Do you think it’s necessary for instructors to provide
opportunities for students to make more points than assignments allow?
Not long ago, I served as an English teacher in a local
school, pinch-hitting for a teacher on emergency medical leave. I taught, but I
also learned a lot, particularly about extra credit.
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Consider these five extra credit lessons I found.
1. The highest scoring students will almost always take
advantage of opportunities to earn extra credit.
Guess who bothered to answer these every time? That’s right.
Scholars who would easily earn 100 percent scores made 100-plus instead.
2. The lowest scoring students often won’t bother with
extra credit projects.
Pupils who failed to complete regular homework assignments
or study for tests and quizzes seldom seemed to bother with extra credit
questions. They tended to show little interest in doing extra reports, collecting
relevant news clippings, helping with classroom bulletin boards, or completing
any other tasks for extra points.
3. Parents may value extra credit more than students do.
Ask my friend Tom, who teaches math in a private high
school. Last month, an angry father stormed into a parent/teacher conference,
grunting about his son’s grade.
“If Sam fails math, he won’t graduate,” the dad complained. “We
pay good money to send him to this school. Can’t you give him an extra credit
project or something?”
“How about the five assignments he neglected to turn in?”
Tom asked.
You can imagine how well that was received by the frustrated
parent.
4. The most popular extra credit assignments tend to have
little to do with the class curriculum.
Raise your hand, parents, if your kids have scored extra for
bringing papers home for parent signatures.
How many have ever received bonus points for donating boxes
of facial tissues or antibacterial wipes to classrooms in elementary or high
school?
5. Extra credit may not be so “extra,” after all.
Although teachers may spend considerable time and creativity
to develop supplementary assignments or other means of offering extra credit
points to struggling students, many schools seem not to regard this as
superfluous at all. Extra credit is a given. Why?
Parents and teachers:
Does anyone else find it frustrating that an assignment has
become less than an assignment? Should students see schoolwork as optional? How
about college essays? Or even career projects?
“I don’t really have to complete this task. I can always do
something for extra credit later, like right before salary reviews.”
Oh, and I want 25 extra credit points for this assignment.
Last year’s A to Z
post: X
Marks the Spot
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