How To Mitigate Nonsense from Lazy/Adversarial Students

Enter grades early on, and (if pre-college) email parents early on.

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.

One of the best strategies to mitigate nonsense from lazy/adversarial students:

Enter grades early on, and (if pre-college) email parents early on.

Students are way more likely to screw around if they think they can get away with it, and the longer they have that mentality,

• the more solidified it becomes,
• the harder it is for them to accept that they've been screwing around, and
• the more likely they are to resist changing their habit and try to blame you instead.

If there’s a kid who is screwing around from day 1 but you don’t put in grades until a month has passed and you don’t break the news to parents until the first conference… well, there’s a good chance that

• the student will complain that the grade is unfair and they've been working really hard, and
• their parents will react poorly, maybe blame you for not correcting the issue earlier or maybe even refuse to believe that the issue is happening.

The root of the problem is that you’ve created a high-stakes situation and now they’re digging their heels in because they’re in shock and there is no easy-out. Fight-or-flight mode has been activated, and it’s after the course drop deadline so there’s no way to flee… so yeah, they’re going to turn feral on you.

They’re in too deep and they’re finding out about it too suddenly.

So, don’t let it get that deep or that sudden!

Don’t put them in a position where they have to climb out of a hole. Try to stop them from digging the hole as soon as they start digging it.

You won’t always prevent students from digging holes, but if they’re hell-bent on digging a hole, at least they and their parents will be aware of the hole they’re digging, and they’ll be more likely to drop the class –

and even if they don’t, you will have a long paper trail (grades, emails to parents) of you telling them to stop digging the hole and trying to help them out of the hold, and you can use that paper trail to defend yourself with if they come after you later and try to blame you for the hole that they dug.

(And because the student/parents know there is a paper trail and this news is not shocking to them, they’re less likely to come after you to begin with.)

This is all advice that Jason Roberts gave me when I first started teaching, and listening to this advice saved me a world of pain.

(Some other teachers ignored the advice and… well, they got themselves into a number of ugly situations that were completely avoidable.)

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.