And then there are some students who have not been showing up. I'm worried about them - what if they thought the work was too hard? What if they felt like they were failing and there was no point in continuing? That's the reason that I've never been able to understand, when a students says, "I'm already failing, so what's the point of continuing to work?" or "Mister, if I haven't done all those assignments, there's no chance of me passing." or "But I didn't think I had any chance of passing, so I just figured I'd stop doing the work."
This type of thinking shows me three things:
1) Some students don't want to ask for an extension or extra help from the teacher
2) Some students don't ask their teacher if there is a chance, they just assume it for themselves without having all the information in front of them
3) Some students don't understand that if you do good on assignments, it brings your average up. So if on Monday, your average is a 35, but you do every assignment perfectly for the next 5 days, your average could go up a lot, and then instead of being 30 points, below passing, now you're only 10 points below.
With #3, do they just not know how the math works? Where numbers get averaged together, and if you add in higher numbers, the entire average goes up? Or is it that they don't understand that grades are always changing and there is always a chance to make up work up to the last possible date? I need some help on this one, students. What do you think?