Vignette 10: Mme. Wagner's Dilemma

I think that it is very important to accommodate extenuating circumstances that students are facing when determining their grades.  There are some things that students will face in their lives that will make concentrating on school very difficult, which obviously will affect their grades.  I don't believe that extenuating circumstances can completely excuse them from their responsibilities as a student, but it is definitely something to take into consideration when giving a student a grade.  At this point, I am unsure of how to give a student a grade by any means of judgement, and not relying on numbers.  At least if I give a student a grade based on marks that they have been given all year I have something to defend myself with when a student's parent inquires about why they got that grade.  I feel that although it may be easy to tell students that they are given different grades or treated differently because "fair is not always equal" to try to explain this to a parent would be much more difficult.  I would like to be able to give students grades based on more that just the marks they get throughout the year, and hope to learn how to do this in the future, but am unsure of how to do so at this point in my career/education.