I have not posted one of these serious topics in a while and wanted to get some feedback for your guys. Mainly because many of you are younger and I want to see if I am way off base with the way i view this stuff or if it is the students here and the way the administration runs the school...
So in the past few days I have faced and dealt with several issues involving students being ill prepared. Every student in the school is required to have a laptop. While the school will provide a Dell laptop for a minor fee, students are also free to bring their own laptops to school. Several students are Mac fans so they choose to bring their Mac in. Anyway...
Scenario 1. Last week seniors did their final presentations. Mac users needed to use on our LCD projectors and did not have the adapter to connect a MacBook to a VGA cable. The ASSistant head of school, who is the only Mac user in the entire school I might add, came in and said we should have adapters ready for them in case they do not have one of their own.
The way I see it. It is the job of our school to make sure these kids are prepared for the real world. Part of being prepared is having what you need to do your job. Since the students chose to use his or her own laptops to do their work, they should be responsible for having their own adapter.
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Scenario 2. Today Final Exams began and most were administered using an online system for submission. One student, who happened to have a Mac, did not have a charger and her laptop was out of juice. I was first asked if we had any Apple chargers, we do not. I was then asked what could be done. I ran to my office grabbed a loaner and set her up so she could finish her exam.
The way I see it. Again this comes down to being prepared. The students knew they needed their laptops for the exam. It should have been either fully charged, or they should have had their charger with them. If I were the teacher I would have failed the student, or at the very least made them take a make-up exam but deduct points from her final grade.
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To clarify, because I seem to be picking on Mac users. Students with PCs come in every day to borrow chargers, so they are just as guilty of being unprepared. In fact I spoke with the aforementioned ASSistant head of school and said I was going to start requiring students to leave their ID in order to borrow something. If they do not have their ID, they can not borrow anything. She said "you cant do that! If they need it for their work then we need to provide it!" This after she just finished saying I need to keep tabs on the chargers and make sure we maintain inventory levels. It is things like this which causes me to putt the emphasis on the first three letters of her position.
So, Like I said, I want to know if I am way off here, or if I am being logical. What would happen in your schools if these things happened? What do you guys think is fair?