Womack: On Accommodation, Syllabi, and Differentiation

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As a teacher, I often struggle with trying to find the right balance between successfully differentiating instructions, keeping my expectations consistent for all of my students, and holding my students accountable for staying on top of the work that they submit for my class. Womack’s article exemplifies a number of ways to successfully tread this line, and I found the attention to syllabi to be both fascinating and informative. I (as well as my students, I am sure) always dread syllabus day. While I have carefully crafted each line in my syllabus to portray a particular point, to emphasize an aspect of the course, or as I will readily admit, to cover my own bases for a situation in which a student or parent might call into question my grading of a student’s performance, the syllabus represents an important document, an agreement on the part of the educator and the student, as to the nature of what the endeavor will entail; however, the fact remains that the students’ eyes glaze over after the first page, the alphabetic process does not convey the information that it was intended to express, and the parents, if they are loud and obnoxious enough, will go over the teacher’s head to administration if they are unhappy with their son or daughter’s grade, regardless of how finely tuned the syllabus might be—as was unfortunately the case for me this past year. As a result, I agree with this notion that the manner in which we convey this syllabus information should be changed, or at the very least, portrayed in such a way that it effectively informs the students.

         One place where we see a great deal of accommodation discussion in our school is for “extended time” on exams and assignments. This provides students with an additional 50% of time if they have been granted permission for this by the administration. Whether it is accurate or not however, the impression of extended time at our school has become that “anyone can receive it if you ask for it,” and so students without any sort of reason have begun requesting extended time due to the competitive nature of our school for an added advantage on assignments. As educators in the English department, we have essentially restructured our curriculum so that any student, regardless of their extended time, has whatever time it is that they need on assignments (with the exception of our “too rigorously enforced” final exams). I dislike the fact that the tone towards extended time at our school has transitioned from “accommodation” to “competition,” but in light of this shift, we have altered our curricula to be as accommodating to student needs as possible across the board.

      As I said before, the close examination of the syllabi in the article was fascinating. I am a nerd when it comes to grammar, and being able to see the attention to how imperative sentences and pronoun antecedents can make for a less threatening and more engaged syllabus was extremely interesting. I also very much liked the examples that emphasized “what student’s say about this teacher’s class” and the effect of bolding or underlining words as ways of condensing the syllabus into a more manageable piece. The last part of the article that discussed late paper policies challenged my ideas about the subject. I am not a fan of the harsh language that goes along with our department’s late paper policy, specifically with 8th grade students. Yet to take out the penalty entirely I think leads to, as the article mentioned, even more procrastination in regards to the completion of larger assignments. I am very interested to see how other teachers in this class negotiate their late paper policies, because in regards to my own, I think that it can do a better job of accommodation and ownership.