Students

A couple of years ago, I had a student with special needs (nearly blind) who took one of my classes. I made all sorts of allowances for her -- gave her twice as much time on assignments, helped her with her research (Okay, I looked it all up online and gave her the URLs), and so on. I watered down the expectations a lot on the grounds that she was taking it non-credit and, I thought, just for her own personal enrichment. (Remember, this is a graduate level course. People normally take it as part of their Master's degree program in theology.)

When it was all over, she wrote and said she wanted me to write a letter saying she had done A-level work so that she could use it to get into a doctoral program. Needless to say, I had lots of issues with that. After some conversations with the director of the Carmelite Institute, I decided not to write such a letter, although I did offer to write a letter explaining the work she had done and under what circumstances and even saying that I believed she might be capable of graduate level work. I had not seen it, however, in my class because I had not required it of her.

I thought that was all resolved, but I went away feeling guilty and manipulated and generally icky.

Now she has signed up for another class. As soon as I sent the syllabus outlining the requirements, I got an email saying she [her readers] can't read all that and she can't possibly get papers done on time and on and on and on.

I wrote back explaining that I will be flexible and make allowances as to time and what I expect of the papers. It feels like the same old, same old, though. Makes me wonder if this is a game she plays with all the profs.

Or maybe I am just being too insensitive.

On the other hand, I have worked with students before with cerebral palsy, visual impairment and such things. They did the work, did it on time and did it well. Often they went well beyond the requirements.

Oh, well.