Deadlines Teach Time Management
….and other connected myths
You assign a project and you give a due date. Then, a certain and perhaps predictable number of students miss the due date, despite any level of reminders and opportunities. And you are not sure what to do.
There is no right answer. Extend the deadline too long and yes, maybe you are teaching students that deadlines are not important, and that it is OK to be stuck in a deep hole with work piling up.
But, on the other hand, a tough penalty for missing this deadline, will not magically make students better at managing their time. Nor will it motivate them to learn the needed skills to do so. At least not without some other conversation, instruction, or support.
Early in my career, and even in my role today, I am told by some excellent veteran teachers that holding students to a deadline teaches students responsibility and time management. That students will, as a result, understand and experience the consequence of the 0 or the grade lowered by ten points each day, and from this learn how to successfully manage their next project. I am here to tell you that none of us will magically gain the needed tools of self-regulation because we have been penalized for a late assignment. Instead, as a student, I will more likely grow frustrated or angry because:
I just can’t get it right, I am a terrible student in (insert the subject)
I know the material but because I do not know how to organize my time I can never show it. I hate school.
No one listens to me or what I do not understand, they just want to lower my grade.
My grade for the year is now so bad that it doesn’t matter if I do work moving forward or not. And, with grades like this I will never get into college anyway so why bother?
This person does not care about me because he/she/they do not know what happens in my home, and that I need help getting work done in a quiet place.
How can I hand a project in on time if I do not know where to start?
My grandmother is sick and all this teacher cares about is this dumb assignment.
The list goes on. Pick one, any one, hold a strict deadline with no support, and you wind up not with a student who becomes more responsible, but with a student who checks out. And who also never learns the essential skills of self regulation that they need beyond the classroom doors.
Here is another connected myth: Letting students miss deadlines is not fair to all those students who made it. No two of us are the same, and no two of your students are the same. In fact, from a certain perspective, a student who has completed and handed in the work and moving on with other things they need to do is in a better place. Thus, I am actually not helping if I extend the deadline or help you make it, I am just prolonging the agony and piling up what you still need to do.
And the corollary to both myths. If I penalize students (by lowering their grade) that will motivate them to be on time in the future. Maybe. For one or two students. But likely not for the ones who actually do not have the skills they need. Or for those who are not motivated by grades, or by the difference between a B and a C, or who have given up on their ability to get good grades. Or who decide it just doesn’t matter. If they did all that work, and you didn’t even acknowledge it because all you cared about was whether it was on time, why bother doing the work? (Actually, why not just make the whole rubric about whether they met the deadline?)
I am not saying that having deadlines is not important, or that teaching students how to work towards them is not important. But that is what you have to do, teach them how to work towards deadlines, how to plan their work, get started, use their time. Instruction, not penalty, is what teaches students to manage their time. Is that built into your classroom instruction? How can it be?
And if students are not there yet, are not ready or open to learning how to do the work? And they still do not make the deadline? Consider the student, consider your conversation with the student (yes! Have a conversation with them!) and consider what you can learn from that conversation. Consider the purpose of the assignment, what you wanted students to learn from it, and how you can accomplish that goal for this student. Because, what can you learn from an assignment that is not turned in? Or that you do not review because it is too late or in the wrong format? Nothing. But you can learn from an adjusted assignment in a different format, or from an oral interview, or from a partial assignment with some reflection on why the rest was not completed. And that something you learn can be a stepping stone for this student.
Consider what a student learns by not handing a project in at all or taking a very low grade. Do they learn that it is OK to take the easier route? And that someone, one more person, has such little belief in them that they are willing to accept this easier route?
It may be that there are practices and guidelines about this within your school, department, or grade level. And, it is important to work within these. But also, how can you use the assignment and completion of a project not as a way to punish those who struggle to do it or do it on time, but as a way to teach them how to do it and do it on time. Looking to build skills and abilities within a framework of belief in skills and abilities.