It’s typical for students in middle school to assert their personhood by testing/breaking some rules and working really hard not to do things they’d rather not do – like attending class. Throughout the first semester, if a student wasn’t present in class when attendance was taken, they were counted as an Unexcused Absence. This created larger attendance problems for us, as it made sorting out attendance records tricky (and also inundated parents with absence notifications that weren’t entirely accurate).
In order to place the responsibility and consequences for not attending class back onto the students, this semester we have instead been referring students to Lunch Detention if they miss more than 10 minutes of a class. If they’re gone for large portions of multiple classes in a day, their lunch detentions will stretch across multiple days. If a student does not attend lunch detention when assigned, or if they refuse to attend, they will be assigned after school detention or Saturday School. (If a student is absent on a day for which they were assigned lunch detention, they can serve it the day they return.)
Students who consistently skip class very quickly fall behind and have to work a lot harder to get caught back up. For our 8th grade learners, it is imperative that they demonstrate their knowledge in class in order to “graduate” and attend high school next year.
Please discuss with your learner the importance of attending their classes and getting their work done, rather than finding ways to get out of it. Thank you for your help with this important issue!
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