On Actual Attendance

IMPORTANT: This page explains the reasoning behind my course attendance policies. You should not read this page until you have already read, in full, the course attendance policy explained at this page (click here).

I require Actual Attendance in real-time class sessions, but allow a certain number (listed on each course’s main page — see the links to course pages in the menu bar at the top of this page) of absences before I deduct attendance credit. I never require proof, documentation, or any reason for a student’s absence. You can use your allowed number of absences for any reason; if the allowed number is exceeded, I deduct credit regardless of the reason.

All students are required to attend a minimum number of class sessions in real time, during scheduled hours, with no exceptions. However, students may be able to attend a certain number of those sessions remotely, receiving the same attendance credit that they would for in-person attendance. Every student can attend a class session remotely, for full credit, at least once. I can also expand limits on remote attendance; click here to learn more about how to arrange expansions of remote learning options.

Given those course policies, there is thus no such thing as an “excused absence” or “unexcused absence” in my courses, under any circumstances. You’re either there or you’re not — the reasons are your call and your business.  Please do not feel pressured, then, to provide me with any reasons, apologies, or documentation for missing class: if you miss class, then I trust your reasons were good ones.  (I also believe, strongly, that any system that compels or pressures literature students to reveal their medical status to professors is barbaric and infantilizing.)  So: save up your allotted absences for emergencies or illnesses — which is what they’re for.

It happens, sometimes, that a semester offers up an unmanageable number of emergencies, forcing the student to exceed the absence limit.  Emergencies and/or illnesses may come so frequently or powerfully that they disrupt classwork significantly. That kind of situation is often very difficult — it is often a situation that demands sympathy, patience, and kindness.  But it doesn’t change the fact that classwork was disrupted. And most components of my classes — being fundamentally and very heavily based in real-time participation, with a focus on spoken language, live performance, physical embodiment, and the interchange of ideas in real time — cannot be made up after the fact. 

Your course mark is not a judgement on your hard work or character, nor a matter of punishment or praise — it is simply a reflection of whether (and how well) you absorbed the material of, and met the challenges of, a course.  So if classwork was significantly disrupted, even if for good reasons, it should be reflected in your course mark.

For the administration to adjust your course mark after the fact as though no disruption had happened is a great disservice and a patronizing insult to the student: you are not here for praise, but for an education.  If the disruption to your coursework was for reasons beyond your control, then pressure the administration to allow you to retake the missed course material free of charge — rather than allowing the university to get off for free by giving you only the symbol of an education, rather than the substance. 

And, should it become absolutely necessary, I will absolutely support you in asking to take any course of mine, or any part of a course of mine, again. If you have lost attendance credit for one of my classes, and you remain a U of T student, and I offer the class again while you are here, you are welcome to come sit in on and participate in up to six sessions of a future class meeting to make up for missed classes in a prior term; should you do so, I would submit an adjusted mark as “late term work” as long as the department and university administration would accept that mark adjustment (any administrative legwork necessary for you to have “late term work” accepted must be done proactively by you). But I cannot offer that accommodation for students who graduate or leave U of T before I happen to be running the same class again — if you have lost attendance credit, but there won’t be another of the same class offered in time for your graduation, I will not be able to give you any opportunity to sit in on sessions to make up missed class.

Think of it this way: if this were a scuba certification class, or basic practical training in surgical procedures, and some emergency happened in which you were unable to attend a third of the sessions… would you want to get full credit after the class ended?  You’d be in great danger under the water — and I certainly wouldn’t want you to be my surgeon.  The time you spend in humanities courses should be valued in the same way (and if you don’t believe that, then why are you taking them?).

And so, major disruptions to course attendance will and should inevitably be reflected in your course mark.  Should circumstances arise that make a student unable to adequately demonstrate Attendance and Participation, that student can generally still earn up to 75% of the course mark. But for my courses, which rely heavily on presence as a learning/research tool, marks above 75 cannot be assigned in good conscience without sufficient student presence in the classroom.

If you remain registered in my class past the first week of so, that constitutes an understanding of, and acceptance of, my absence policy. It is still possible to pass my classes, and to earn as high as a B+, even after having exceeded my absence limit — however, make sure you’re fully aware of my other course policies, especially the make-up policy for in-class questions, explained at your course website.

If, after all that, you still believe that I should or must remove consideration of your attendance from your final mark, you will have to take up your issue with those university administrators whose responsibility it is to settle student complaints. I will never voluntarily make an exception to my attendance policy — I believe that to do so would be very unfair to everyone involved: to me, to my other students, and to you. That means that the only way to secure such an exception is to convince an administrator to compel me to make an exception (and to thus earn your mark of approval against the will of the professor who is qualified to evaluate your work — an empty symbol that you should not want).