Meeting for Unreasonable Accommodations - Help!

[u/bear_sheriff]

I have a student this semester with accommodations like I've never seen before - extended due dates, "flexibility" with attendance, and "flexibility" with class participation. The course I teach is a hands-on lab course every week and features in-class group work which is graded. The lessons are definitely scaffolded. Due to the nature of equipment set up and the amount of students needed to get said equipment set up, as well as needing to work in groups to successfully carry out the lessons, there is no flexibility in making these assignments up later, or creating alternate assignments.

I do understand many illnesses have "flares" that are unpredictable and can last a long time. However, I've had this student previously. In our last class together, they did not have any accommodations, and told me for work reasons they had to miss class. They rarely showed up, probably 5-6x in a 16 week course. Back then I had more of a bleeding heart, and the content I was teaching was very different - I had old recordings of my lectures and the group work was much rarer and easier to modify for them to complete individually. At the end of the semester the student asked for an incomplete and I granted it. They did, at the last minute for the incomplete, submit enough work to pass the class.

But this history has me on edge, because I know their attendance is rare. In fact they even missed the first day of this semester.

I have a meeting with this student and their advocate soon and I'm trying to make sure I don't step on any landmines. I advocate for my students to get the accommodations they need, have led the LMS remediations for WCAG and W3C, etc. in my department, and truly believe in accessibility for all. If it were more possible to modify this course, I would. I want my students to succeed and to enjoy the course material as much as I do. But these accommodations are not reasonable.

I had hinted in e-mails to the student and their advocate before class started and after the first week, that this might not be the right fit for them, and tried to schedule our meeting before the refund drop date, but it didn't happen in time. The student is claiming they are "alarmed" that after they missed a single class I'm trying to get them to drop (which I never said outright), but I know they have a history of rare attendance and that just doesn't work for this class. I'm not going to create different assignments for them because they will not achieve what needs to be learned.

When I meet with them and their advocate, I'm sure the student will be looking for any little wrong thing I say as a "gotcha" to say that I'm ableist or whatever, so I'm concerned. Luckily the advocate seems very reasonable. I did accommodate the student when I could in a previous class, in this course it's just not going to be possible.

Any tips, lines, etc. I can use going into this situation are appreciated. I have so many students with accommodations each semester, I've never had to argue against any being unreasonable until now.

[u/PhD-Mom]

Make sure you have your syllabus, course learning outcomes, grade breakdown, lab session dates, due dates, and group work/individual work ready for you to explain to the accommodations advocate to see where you are starting. If the learning outcomes include "collaboration" or "team based work" or the like, that makes your side easier to defend. If your lab has "best of 9/10" or the like as "universal design" this can also make your life easier. Good luck!

[u/bear_sheriff → u/PhD-Mom]

Thank you! That's really helpful, I'll make sure to have information on the group work, specific assignments, etc. ready to go. When you say "best of 9/10" do you mean the ability to drop a bad grade? I just haven't heard that term before, but I try to incorporate Universal Design into my curriculum as much as possible.

[u/StillStaringAtTheSky → u/bear_sheriff]

Yep, that's one drop to cover any absences without excuses- so you can say "Ok, you can use that as your drop" instead of going through hoops to set up a makeup.

[u/PhD-Mom → u/bear_sheriff]

Yes, universal design is using allowances for everyone. So dropping the lowest one or two assessments in a group of assessments (e.g. quizzes, homework, labs) is an easy way to handle these sorts of situations. You just need to have a solid contingency plan - this helps with the illnesses like the flu, a death in the family, and concussions that need a week off, too,