College
Monday, October 29, 2012
Attendance & College-Readiness
Again from the desk of Corey Bower: Attendance--In-School or Non-School Problem. He doesn't touch on the concept of college-readiness, but his post begs the question of how college-ready standards and behaviors would treat chronic absenteeism. If we are going to teach students the skills and habits of mind they need to be successful in post-secondary education (or work, for that matter), don't they a) need to show up for those lessons and b) be directly taught that attendance matters? The school where I work has very good attendance, but the students who are chronically late and/or absent haven't gotten the message that attendance is critical. How can we communicate this more effectively in the context of college & career-ready teaching?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Reading this article with college-readiness in mind made me think about an element of college and career readiness that I had not previously considered. Most of the discussion on the topic is focused on content knowledge, but Gillian's comments bring to light the fact that students who are chronically absent from school have not learned the importance of commitment and follow-through, which are skills that are necessary for even the most basic jobs. Students who do not see the value in showing-up will quickly be fired from their jobs once they graduate from high school. Some may say that schools are not teaching these students good work ethic or values, but schools don't have much control over whether students are in attendance each day. Many high schools have policies which fail students for missing too many days of school, but I wonder how many of those schools actually enforce the policy. Maybe students do need to be directly taught that attendance matters, as Gillian said, but how do we teach that lesson within the confines of our jobs as teachers?
ReplyDeleteAt my school, I think we try to directly teach students that attendance matters AND we do enforce attendance rules. Granted some teachers, myself included, might be less than consistent about enforcement within our classes, but the automatic failure list is maintained each quarter. There are also consequences for chronic tardiness and truancy, but many students still do not change their behavior. I think that attendance is often outside of our control...if the parents aren't interested enough in making sure that their kids are in school every day, there's only so much we can do to help...
ReplyDeleteGillian