Tough Questions

One of the last discussion board posts to which you will respond this year will be regarding your own attitudes and performance in Honors English. One thing I have tried to do is provide very specific written instructions for every assignment and due date, but lately I am getting the impression that some of you aren't reading them. For example, if the assingnment calls for a letter of 400-500 words, and you submit a letter of about 150 words, that's clearly not "honors caliber" work because, regardless of the content of your letter, you didn't follow all the instructions. For another example, consider the list of due dates for blogs and discussion board posts. They are clearly written right in the middle of the honors web site, yet some of you haven't made all the required posts, and many of you haven't made them on time. (It's easy to tell because the discussion board automatically puts the date on each post.) Is it reasonable for those of you who are not completing the assignments to receive credit just like those of you who are? Maybe more importantly than these examples, did you think hard and always give each thing you submitted for this class your best, or were they just more "tell the teacher what he wants to hear so I can go play Nintendo" responses that honors students are so good at? If this had been a traditional class during the school day, and each assignment was strictly graded, would you have received an A?

Consider these questions for the next couple weeks.