Holy moly - grades aren't even posted yet, and I've gotten at least 10 emails from students wanting me to bump their grades up... And for what reason? They enjoyed my class, they tried really hard, and they are disappointed. I'm talking wanting to bump from a D+ to a C, for example. None of these students are anywhere near the cutoff for the next highest grade (for example, a D+ to a C-), so it's just annoying. I know they are thinking "it doesn't hurt to ask," but I've never had this much grubbing.
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A mother wrote me. She provided a careful rationale why her daughter’s grade needs to be an A—and questioning the role of two assignments in the final average. I think a new wave is about to emerge. It could be interesting to watch and monitor.
"I can neither confirm nor deny that your daughter is in my class".
That's pretty close to what I use.
"Per FERPA regulations at my University. I can neither confirm nor deny that your child was in my class."
the other thing I'm thinking of is that, for those who are apparently required to reply to parents: how do you know that this actually is the parent of a student in your class, and not somebody (perhaps with malicious intent) trying to pass themselves off as such a parent?
And this is why I do not respond to any emails regarding most things unless they’re institution emails.
I’ve also had students email me from their personal emails (some of which are funny-inappropriate like [email protected], and others that I’m legitimately concerned I would get flagged for sending an email to an address with racial slurs in it…) and on one particular occasion their email address was in Korean characters, the sender name was in Korean characters, and there was no context as to who the email was actually from. When they asked me a week later in class why I didn’t respond I was like “oh, that email was from you?!? I had no clue who it was from!”. If I can’t be sure who it’s from, I’m not responding to it with any information about a student.
Institution emails or bust.