Ourview
Teachers
need to be flexible
Imagine you begin the fall semester excited
about your classes, budgeting to pay for
your textbooks, but all and all energetic
and willing to walk every day from Lower
to Upper Campus. Two months go by and you
are doing great in your classes, you’ve
put a lot of effort in and you are willing
to do whatever necessary to obtain the best
grades in your classes this semester.
Now imagine you are also a woman and you
find out you are pregnant. What do
you do? Drop your classes and postpone your
education, if not relinquish it?
Many Cal State Long Beach students face
this question each semester. While
they are able to continue to go to school
throughout most of the duration of their
pregnancy, they must at some point take
time off from school before or after the
birth of their child. CSULB has policies
in place that allow professors to drop students
from their classes after three consecutive
absences. So, what is the student to do
in this case?
The obvious response would be to talk to
the professor. But what happens when the
professor refuses to accommodate the student?
And why would they refuse to sympathize
with the student? Many professors feel that
it is unfair to the rest of their students
to accommodate pregnancies and either drop
the students or fail them, but do not allow
them to do any type of make-up work.
The point is well taken, but is it fair
for students that are in good standing and
willing to put in the time doing alternative
work to finish their semester with good
grades to be forced to forgo their classes
because they are pregnant? No. Life
has many unexpected changes that do not
allow for our plans to maintain our scheduled
course. Although teachers are not responsible
for these changes, they should be flexible
enough to want to help students succeed
in the courses they teach. After all, even
professors have found themselves with obstacles
in their careers that they wish would have
alternative avenues.
When a professor encounters an unexpected
surgery, or family crisis, the university
is willing to find alternatives for the
sake of keeping a good professor in their
staff and for the benefit of the campus
body. Shouldn’t students be afforded the
same accommodations? It may seem as though
the professor is being unfair to the rest
of their class members to provide a separate
curriculum for a student with special needs,
such as a pregnancy. However, it is
ultimately advantageous to the university
as a whole to maintain the enrollment of
good students and encourage all professors
to have an alternative syllabus that can
help students with special, unexpected circumstances.
The responsibility also falls on students
to insure a good communication between them
and their professors while abiding by the
agreements that their professors provide
assistance and sympathy for their students.
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