Originally Published in the November 26th Print Publication
On September 15th, 2024, an email arrived in the inboxes of all students and parents across North Creek High School. The school had already been buzzing about the possibility of a change in policy on how students would approach due dates.
In the years before, we had gone from chaos to a week to a day for the amount of time late work would still be accepted for full credit, so many speculated that this year, we would no longer have a so-called “grace period” for work turned in late.
“Please be sure your teen knows that work is due on the due date and may not earn full credit (or any credit) if it’s turned in late,” read the Jaguar Bulletin on September 15th. And thus we had returned from having a universal policy demanding teachers give students time after their due date to earn full credit to each teacher being able to have their individual policies about the subject matter.
“I think part of it is because we are post past, post COVID now, and because of that, we have to revert back to our academic policies before COVID,” Jay Kenyon, one of North Creek’s history and Ethnic Studies teachers, said about why we have changed our policies. “The other reason is students got comfortable…and they started gaming the system, as in, ‘oh, I’m not going to do my homework and I’m going to just do it like much later, because it’s going to still be counted off, right?’ And it’s not necessarily fair to the staff like me and my co-workers, who have to do a lot more work just so a student can take advantage of the system and game it.”
“It’s a good policy, because when I get into the real world and having you as a student of mine, I like to do assessments that are more real world based. I would rather have a student have those challenges where they may fail, but get back up in my class, because the consequences in the real world are far more severe, where people can be fired, right, or let go of employment,” Kenyon continued.
“Now, with that said, I am empathetic, as you know, with the late work grade request, because everybody may or may not have accommodations, but at the same time, we all have lives,” Kenyon said, being one of the teachers who has set up a Google Form which students may use to request extensions for late work.
Again, this is a decision that has been reached by admin after a long thought process and thorough inquisition. And it’s one that makes the lives of teachers much easier. “… it also like it helps [teachers] plan. So if they know that the work’s going to be turned in on the due date, then they know that — I like to use science as my example — but they know that all the pre work for the lab is going to be in and the kids will all be ready for the lab, instead of having some kids ready, some kids not ready,” counselor Charlene Beam said on how the new policy may benefit teachers.
However, this new policy also comes with pitfalls for students. “I’ve definitely heard some students that are concerned about this policy, especially those who found that extra day really helped them,” Beam continued, though she feels that “…it’s going to help with just, you know time, you guys learning time management and getting things in on time.”
A high school’s job is to both educate our children and the same time prepare them for college and potential future careers. And so what does that mean to students? Does it mean giving them the same hard deadlines they would expect to face in college and the workplace? Or should high schools present itself as more nurturing, slowly giving us more and more tight deadlines as the years progress? North Creek has given us its answer, and it is up to the student body to adjust or petition for a different policy.
