well, that sucks

They are not even cancelling classes for mid-level assessment testing this semester: we'll just have random absences we're expected to excuse.

I might still cancel ecology lab that day if some of my students are going to be missing for the tests, because I don't want them to be hurt by missing a lab, and making up lab is impossible.

But yeah, WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO TELL US THIS BEFORE CLASSES STARTED.

And that means: no "alternate day" for going to Whitesboro.

Okay, so MAYBE I DON'T CELEBRATE MY BIRTHDAY AT ALL THIS YEAR. Because apparently I am not ALLOWED to.

Edited to add: I just sent an e-mail to the office doing this noting:

1. Wednesday afternoons I teach a lab that is all-but-impossible for students to make up if they miss
2. I don't want to re-schedule a lab that day if several of my students will be out
3. "How soon will they know and can tell us?" because honestly, if it's not until like a week before, that's not enough time.

I also included the statement

It would have been much easier for the faculty to work with this if we had known before we wrote our syllabi for the semester.

 


It might come back to bite me later, I don't know (You don't always know what upsets people) but honestly, it's the TRUTH and if people are gonna get mad at me, they might as well get mad at me for stating the truth.

And I'm fairly sure I'm not going to be the only one expressing similar sentiments, at least in the lab sciences. (Departments where there are no lab classes, they often don't even HAVE afternoon classes, and people coming from those disciplines don't always think about the people who teach labs. I have had the experience of people from other disciplines being shocked to learn we only get one credit-hour per load for every 2-3 hours spent in lab: in lecture or discussion classes, every hour in class counts as one hour to load)

Doing a make-up lab for a few people who miss isn't really possible: many of the labs I do require groups of 4, or use equipment (or going to a location) that isn't always available. AND ANYWAY it's a bit rich to expect us to blithely do make-ups (extra work for us) because of some things they didn't plan.

I wonder why this is being done? Surely we're not in danger of having too few class days? We get Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off, and Good Friday, and Spring Break. That's fewer days off than many college campuses. But who knows?