The students at Christian Heritage Elementary have been working long and hard on the Easter Program. The program has been on the calendar and advertised numerous times. All 4th, 5th and 6th grade students are required to attend. Failure to do so will result in a 0 in music class for The Easter Program. The Easter Program is 50% of the possible points in music class.
There are no opportunities for make-up for missing the program.
Mrs. Jensen - Music Teacher
Mrs. Erwin - Principal
You'd Better Write That One Down
14 years ago
4 comments:
Wait a second, isn't today a Thursday?
See Christian Heritage School Student Policy Manual, section 4.041-1 part VI.L, available at:
http://www.chsut.org/dnn/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=sMGIi506uqM%3d&tabid=176&mid=532
Relevant language:
"No homework, tests, major papers, or projects are to be due on Thursday. Families are to be encouraged to attend church together. Teachers should
minimize homework on weekends, holidays and vacation. Family times
should be encouraged during these special times."
The rules state the reason some one could avoid "homework, tests, major papers or projects" on a Thursday is to attend church as a family. It doesn't sound like anyone came to the teachers to ask for their child(ren) to be excused in order to attend church. I'm sure if there would have been, there would have been no issue at all, in substance and in intent.
But of course, if one reads only the first sentence of the policy -- a problem of favoring one sentence over a paragraph of context -- then it sounds like a CHS teacher can't require anything of any student on a Thursday, including anything that actually happens while the child is _in a school class_ on a Thursday. The policy's language is an an obvious syntax failing over intent, were only the first sentence the deciding interpretive force.
While we're clarifying, perhaps CHS should write a Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday policy as well. Our kids have church on Wednesday; I'm sure others have church on other weekdays as well. Interpreted poorly that means a teacher couldn't require anything of any student on any day of class.
Re: "The rules state the reason some one could avoid "homework, tests, major papers or projects" on a Thursday is to attend church as a family."
Actually, the section referenced is not an outline of "acceptable excuses" for a student. Adopting that reading requires ignoring the fact that the referenced section is part of a long list of "Guidelines for Teachers." Note that the referenced guideline provides a specific directive followed by several general suggestions. It does not say "no homework, tests, major papers, or projects are to be due on Thursday if children decide to attend church with their family on that day." One can use general suggestions to provide context for why a specific directive was given(i.e., the reason we don't assign homework on Thursday is so children can be encouraged to attend church with their families), but one can't use them (logically, anyway) to overturn a specific directive (i.e., I can assign homework on Thursday if children are not attending church with their family). A more intelligent argument to make would be that the "guidelines for teachers" are just that: guidelines that can be broken to suit one's whims (just as pirates routinely break the "pirate's code" for example).
Re: "But of course, if one reads only the first sentence of the policy -- a problem of favoring one sentence over a paragraph of context -- then it sounds like a CHS teacher can't require anything of any student on a Thursday, including anything that actually happens while the child is _in a school class_ on a Thursday. "
Actually, if one doesn't read the paragraph in isolation (following your love for context), one will see that "homework" is defined elsewhere in the policy as assignments "of such a nature that the student must complete all or part of the assignment during non-class time." Therefore, activities that can be completed in their entirety during class time would not be included in the prohibition, unless they are a "test," a "major paper," or a "project" (one wonders whether they intended for only "major projects" to fall within the prohibition--inartful policy drafters, to be sure).
Re: "While we're clarifying, perhaps CHS should write a Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday policy as well."
Actually, the better idea would to not have a policy for a specific day at all. I agree that it is silly that CHS has adopted a "No Thursday" policy, but for whatever reason, apparently they decided that was the way to go. Now they have a policy that they can either follow or disregard. Maybe they have compelling reasons for disregarding the policy in this case (they should if they plan to flunk every kid who wasn't at the Easter Program, right?), but it doesn't alter the fact that the policy was disregarded.
Re: "I'm sure others have church on other weekdays as well. Interpreted poorly that means a teacher couldn't require anything of any student on any day of class."
I'd agree that would be a poor interpretation, but not an interpretation that would logically follow from any reasonable reading of the paragraph, for reasons I outlined above. If a policy states "no homework on Thursday so you can go to church" (adopting your inartful reading of the guideline above for arguments sake), one could not reasonably read that to mean "no homework on any day that you decide to go to church."
Whee! Isn't this fun? I'm here all day. :-)
[Edited to correct at least one grammatical error]
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