Deadlines Matter: Debunking the Myth That Competency-Based Grading Means No Deadlines
by Brian Stack • • 0 Comments
I have a very compassionate boss. I spent several weeks working on my school’s budget for the upcoming year and I had been sending her updates on my progress throughout. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, though, that on the week that the budget was due my high school had a series of unexpected student issues that consumed most of my time and resources. As important as that budget due date was, I knew I just wasn’t going to make the deadline. As much as I hated to admit defeat, I made the call to her on Friday afternoon to ask for an extension (or at the very least, forgiveness). She was quick to respond to me with this: “Brian, I know it has been a tough week for you. I know through our check-in meetings over the past few weeks that you have been actively working on it. It is ok if you need a little bit more time. Could you have it to me by the middle of next week?” As she uttered those words I could feel the weight of the world lifting off of my shoulders. “Of course I could, thank you for your flexibility!”What happened between my boss and I that day happens in all aspects of our lives as adults. It is normal behavior to expect that every once in a while, people are going to miss a deadline. In the classroom we as teachers know that students will miss deadlines from time to time. When they do, we do what any normal teacher would do – we become compassionate and flexible. Just like in real life with adults, we only start to worry about the behavior of missing deadlines when it goes from once in a while to chronic.
In the real world, the chronic misbehavior of missing deadlines is rarely tolerated. People can lose jobs over too many missed
