How to handle students asking for deadline extensions
Teachers feel torn between being empathetic to student excuses and upholding a strict late policy after giving adequate time in class. Constantly deciding whether to grant exceptions makes it difficult to maintain consistent boundaries, leading to students pushing for extensions months late or trying to bypass the class entirely.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Enforcing strict 1 to 2 week late policies
- 2Allowing 'proof of life' or 50% minimum credit for missing work to prevent unrecoverable Fs
- 3Holding the line and refusing to accept months-late work
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I have a student who has been here 4 days in 7 weeks. She e-mailed me and informed me I was going to keep her from "doing what she needed to do" so she was going to see if she could just do my class online.”source ↗
“I teach high school freshmen. So many students come in and ask to turn in work months late.”source ↗
“But now and then, I get a message from a student asking for another day, and if they give me a reason, I'm usually fine with it, but sometimes they'll be like, "Mister, I can't finish this. Can I do it tomorrow." And my instinct is to be like, "Of course." But then I think, "I gave you two weeks and class time to do it." And I don't want to get in the habit of always saying "Okay," but it's difficult.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 4How to stop confusing students with multiple assignment due dates
- 4Why am I being forced to give minimum grades for missing work?
- 2How to tell management a deadline is impossible
- 4How to grade open-ended assignments and tests faster
- 8Why won't students do the reading assignments?
- 2How to grade trash student work without sugarcoating it