More On Makeup Work

Another reminder: We are getting soooo close to the end of the term! Please help your students complete and receive credit for their institute course.

This is what I am sharing with all my classes regarding completing their courses this semester:

If you have fallen below 75% attendance in your institute course, you need to complete makeup work to receive credit for the course. There are a lot of things I will consider for makeup work, it really is a matter of you and I working together to get the work done. The key thing I will be looking for is equal work for class time lost; that means that if you miss a class, what you do for makeup work should be commensurate in time, effort, and related to what you missed in class.

Here are some examples of makeup work I have accepted in the past:

1. Service project brief reports. The report should connect the service to the course you are enrolled in and doing makeup work for. And I do mean "brief." A short write up, no more than a typed, double spaced page is sufficient. 
2. Talks given in Sacrament Meeting or in Stake Conference. Show me your notes and tell me how it went, and show me connections to the material missed from class.
3. Abstracting General Conference talks. This means writing a brief paragraph for General Conference talks and turning them into me. Typically for an institute class, which are usually about 90 minutes, I would expect a student to read and abstract at least two general conference talks. Remember, I need to see how the talks connect to the class missed. 
4. Independent study work. Completing assigned independent study work for the class periods missed and emailing your completed work to me.
5. Hard labor. Yup, you read that right: Hard labor. I had a student once who had missed just one too many classes to receive credit and graduate from seminary. It was a nice day and I needed to move some wood from one place to another, so he came over and helped me. Took us about an hour and a half, we got the job done, we talked about things he had missed in seminary, and he got credit for the class. I must admit, this is actually one of my favorite memories of my days teaching seminary! 

There are lots of ways to complete makeup work for institute! Here is the key: If you have an idea of something you would like to do for makeup work, get it approved with me before you do it! Below is the Seminary & Institutes of Religion policy on makeup work.

S&I Policy on Makeup Work: “When makeup assignments are required, they should be given to bless and not punish the student. Specific assignments are determined by the teacher and should generally be related to the work missed. The assignments should be meaningful, reasonable, and individually suited to the needs and abilities of the student. Please be aware of the following:

• Attendance above the minimum requirement in one term may not be used as makeup work in another term.

• Students not meeting the attendance requirement and not completing the makeup work should not be given credit for the course.

• Teachers should take the initiative to work with students who have not yet received credit to assist them in completing the course.

• Students are permitted to do makeup work during the years they are enrolled in secondary education and up to one year after completing their secondary education.”