What do you do to get students to turn in missing assignments?

Teachers say

“I put zeros in the gradebook and give them until the test to turn them in for full credit. After that, I only give half credit at max.”

“My principal told me to offer bonus points on the test to any student who has all of their work turned in… doesn’t really help much other than reward the ones who do their work anyways.”

“This is one of my biggest problems with students and I have no idea what to do about it. I’ve tried multiple ideas with little to no success, so good luck!”

Me = Teacher, Coach, Dad

My take on this is that when students are failing to hand in work on time, it can be used as a learning opportunity for the students and their teachers.

Teachers tell me that they have tried everything. They have used reward stickers, put zeros in the grade book, given extra time... basically they have used various forms of external motivation. However, success comes from engaging students' internal motivation - their natural desire to participate, solve problems and succeed.

What I do: Ask students about their successes outside school, then transfer those strategies and use them inside school.

We have end-of-lesson discussions. We collate success strategies. I ask the students questions like, "What do you need, to get assignments turned in on time?"

We also compare getting things done on time in other circumstances where they are naturally successful. I ask, "What do you do to get things done on time outside of school?"

We discover they solve problems in different ways. We collect their successful strategies and share them with the class so they could learn from each other.

Students are unique

There's no single strategy that works for all of them all the time. They all need to find their own reason to study and hand in assignments at all. And, if they don't already have a successful strategy, they need our help in doing that. Don’t give them a strategy. Don’t wave a stick.

It's not your job to wave a stick.

It's not the teacher's job to make them do anything.

It is the teacher's job to guide and support students in the process of discovering their inner drive to study and learn, and hand in work on time.

When you and they know what they need, you can build a support system around them. It might include you (the teacher) and their peers, parents, other teachers, siblings, aunts and uncles, students from other classes... there will be many different contributors.

By the Way

I happened to be using a website, following the progress of a certain train that was carrying my daughter from Stockholm to Gothenburg this afternoon. I noticed that “Currently, there are 246 passenger trains in service in Sweden, of which 89% are on time. There are also 54 freight trains, 72% of which are on time.” So, yeah, even the National Train service struggles to get things done on time. I think we can give our students this as a perspective. The grown ups aren’t 100% successful.