Absences – How to Deal With Them [Episode 152]

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All right, y’all tell me what’s worse? Is it worse when a student is absent, when you are absent, or when an entire class section is absent because of a pep rally, and then they get behind all your other sections of the same prep? You know there’s when I think about absences. There are so many different scenarios, and on all fronts, it just gets complicated. Absences are just one of the many variables that keeps the job of a secondary science teacher very interesting, right? So how do you deal with all of these variables as an extremely type a person? I can tell you, I have had to grow a lot in this area. So I’m excited to share what I’ve learned, kind of some hot takes, if you will, about my opinions on how I manage absenteeism. And we’re gonna cover it all. We’re gonna cover making up, labs, tests, chronic absenteeism, when you’re absent, when you get mid year, transfers, all the things. It’s gonna be a lot, but I’m excited, so let’s get into it. This is secondary science simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from it’s not rocket science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend, let’s get to today’s episode. You

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first, I want to start with what I think is the most tiresome of all the different parts of absences, and that is when your students are absent and you’re trying to figure out what to do about makeup work. I feel like we already have so much to keep up with on a daily basis, let alone keeping up with people’s absences, what work they have to turn in, how many days they have to do it? Am I going to grade this all later? It’s just there’s so many pieces and details to it, and it’s really exhausting. I can’t tell you how tickled I would be when I’d be taking attendance while my students worked on their prime time bell ringer, and I would see everyone was here for the day, especially if everyone was here on a lab day, I was just so excited and relieved to know that that was something I didn’t have to worry about. It was very rare, but those nice rainbow days did happen with all the people. We do know, though, that most of the time that’s not the case. So first question I often get is, How do you handle the makeup work there. And for me again, this is kind of just my opinion here. My hot take is, I want to give students as little work as possible, so the least amount to do. I will rarely ask a student to make up every single thing they missed in one class period, because we do a lot in one class period, so I’m not going to ask them to make up all that, because realistically, I know that they’re not going to do it. They’re making up work for potentially three other classes, if it’s on a block schedule, or maybe up to six additional classes other than mine, if they’re on a traditional schedule, and that is so much for them to catch up on. So instead of overwhelming them to the point that they then settle to cheat and copy someone’s work just to get it done and cross, you know, check that off the list, I’d rather say, Hey, here’s like, the one thing I need you to do. Can you do that for me, like today or tonight? So that way we can get you caught up. Because to me, that is the priority of catching up an absent student is getting them to the point that they can jump back in ASAP with what we’re doing that day, because the further along they get dragged without making up that late work, the harder it is to kind of catch them up. So I want to get them going as quickly as we can back into the rhythms and where we are in the pace of our class. So I train my students at the beginning of the year that if they are going to be absent, whether it’s excused, unexcused, expected, unexpected, sick, a vacation, a volleyball tournament, whatever that my expectation is that when they come back to the classroom, they will have copied the notes that they missed. At a minimum, I always maintain a class website where I kept an agenda where I basically, at the end of every day, I typed up what we had written on the whiteboard for our agenda for the day, so that there was a digital record of what we did. And you know, I don’t just take a picture of it, because sometimes we don’t get to everything. So I physically type like what we did. We did these notes, we got through this number of slides, that kind of thing. So they always have a reference point for what they missed. I keep a QR code that goes to my class website on my whiteboard. So then if someone comes in from being absent and they’re like, What did I miss? I’m like, scan the QR code and check the website for the day you were gone. Like, I’m not gonna remember. What days you were here, what days you were not you look up the dates, and you can look it up, and they know I have to copy the notes if there were notes done on the day I was gone. That is my bare minimum. So I have a virtual PD course all about my classroom culture. It’s just a mini course. It’s only a couple of PD hours, but in it, I train you on how I do procedures, and how I train my students in procedures in my classroom. And this is one of the things that I train at the beginning of the year. And we talk about all the time, and every time someone’s absent, and they come back in the next day at the beginning of the year and they ask, Hey, what did I miss? I use it as like a learning thing, like for the whole class, like a learning tool. So it’s like a mini lesson for everybody, like, okay, Jessica was absent yesterday. Guys, what do we do when we’re absent and I like, we rehearse it. They go to the website, they check what they missed, they see if they there were any notes, and it’s their job to copy them before they come to class. My students know that all of my lecture videos are pre recorded for the entire year on my YouTube channel. Anyone can use these. You all can too. It’s youtube.com/at, it’s not rocket science. Classroom is my channel, and I have all my lecture videos there for chemistry, physical science, biology, anatomy. You don’t have to use my curriculum to use them, but obviously, if you use my resources, they perfectly align, so students have the option of watching the video with me teaching on it. Or when I upload my agenda on my website every day, I would also like upload the dot pbtx file for my students too, so they could just read it if they prefer to do that as well. So that is what I personally train my students on. Because here’s the deal, we use our notes all the time in my class. Basically every day is an open note day. Every Prime Time bell ringer, any sort of type of assessment is open note labs. I want them looking back at their notes practice, look back at the examples we did in the notes, like, look at your notes. Always, always, always. And so they want to have those as a reference point up until, basically, the day of the test, which is not open note over the years, I’ve softened to the idea of open note test, but that’s a conversation for another day. So they know, like when they’ve been absent, I make them do the bell ringer. I want them to at least try it, because sometimes we didn’t learn anything. Maybe we’re talking about Punnett squares, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. They miss Wednesday, but they were here Monday, Tuesday, so on Thursday, if the prime time bell ringer is about Punnett squares, I want them to do it because they only missed one day of practice on it. It’s not like they missed all of the stuff. It’s not like every day we’re necessarily learning new content. So no matter what I have them do the prime time, I give a lot of grace in terms of, like, Okay, we literally learned something brand new, and they, you know, maybe didn’t get it. I’m not gonna, like, roast them on the prime time in terms of how I grade it. There’s flexibility there, but that’s something that really urges them to get their notes. I find this especially true, like when I taught at a private school, y’all every single kid plays like two to three sports, and you know, is in the school play and is on Student Council. Like the amount of extracurriculars was out of control, and so students were constantly gone. My first year there, my sixth period class, my last class period of the day, I had 12 students. It was a really small class, and nine of them either were on the football team, cheered for the football team, or were in the marching band for the team. And so anytime there was an away game, nine of my students were gone. That was 75% of my class. It was out of control. And so it got to the point where, like, I couldn’t just constantly accommodate for all of these absences for their extracurriculars. So this is the one thing I drew the line in the sand on. Like you have to do the notes. Now the compromise is everything else, Ms Joyner is going to catch you up on. So for example, if you see that we did practice problems while you were gone, I teach with packets, so students get all of their handouts at the beginning of the unit for the entire unit. So they can see on my website, like, oh, we took notes on page two, did some practice problems on page five, and then, you know, started to go over a lab that we’re gonna be the next day on page six. So I would expect them to have gotten those notes. Then when they come in, I’ll say, Hey, I would love it if you want to come in for tutoring. One day, I tutored every afternoon from three to 330 when school got out, because most of the school practices and things didn’t start till 333 45 anyway. And so I would say, hey, come in and let’s just do the odds with me. Like, if this practice page has 10 problems, just do like half with me. And then I’ll give you this is like a freebie grade, you know, I’ll count this for completion. That way we know you’re squared away on this before we keep moving forward. For students that ride

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the bus, I found that that was the hardest to get them in for tutoring. Basically anyone else could kind of accommodate that afternoon period. So I did make an exception and do some lunch tutoring for bus riders, that was a very small subset of people. I protected lunch every other time, but for like, those kinds of students, I’d be like, hey, come in and just do some of these with me at lunch today to get you caught up. Now, for activities, I don’t make the makeup activities, because almost all of my activities are either inquiry based, so they’re to introduce a concept and really engage them in it. And so if they’re coming in and having missed that, then they’re probably coming in on the EXPLAIN day. So we’re not going to go back and do the Engage and explore. In retrospect, it doesn’t matter. Or they’re on the other end, and they’re used for reinforcement, so they don’t necessarily need to do it to learn it. It just really helps. But like, I’m not going to burden you with this activity or this thing that we did as a whole class, like you’re not going to get the same vibe since you were here. Weren’t here for it. And so yes, our activity is valuable. Of course, I’m obsessed with activities. I have at least one instructional resource for every single concept that I teach, but oftentimes more than one. But again, my goal here is to get them to be as current as possible, and so weighing them down with a lot of stuff does not help me reach that goal. So that’s why I will just exempt them from that. So I literally would put in my gradebook. Yours may have a similar option. You can mark it with an x. Or in one school I had, it was an E for exempt, another was x for exempt. But it basically shows the student that, like, you don’t have to do this. It’s not hurting you or helping you. It’s not a zero, but it’s also not like an easy grade, because most students know that my in Class F is pretty easy to get a good grade on, because I grade A lot of it for completion. Now, if they ask me, like, Can I do this? Of course, like, I will help them do that. But that’s rarely happening. Mostly, they appreciate me cutting down the to do list for them. Now, labs is a whole nother thing, so we’re going to talk about labs in a second. But that is mainly what I do with a makeup work. This also eliminates me having to be like, Okay, you have five days to make this up, or whatever that may be. Tests are a little bit different. I will say, test if they miss the review day. I train them at the beginning of year that you are if you do miss review day and that you come for the test day the next day, you’re still expected to take the test. Review day is just a bonus day. It’s not a requirement. You aren’t obligated to get a review day before a test. So you get them used to that precedent. It’s not a surprise when they walk in on test day and are expected to take the test. Now if they miss an actual test day. I train them like that. You need to come in right away and be prepared to make it up. Typically, I will say, hey, let’s stay after school today. Let’s do if you can only say for 30 minutes, because you have soccer practice, let’s do half of it today, and then I’ll print the other half, and you can do the other half tomorrow. They’ve seen how far behind they get the longer they put off the tests, they will always do worse if they wait two weeks to do it and we’re two weeks into new content, as opposed to doing it right away. So I urge them to do that. Another option for those bus rider students, my tests typically cover three concepts of content that we worked on in that unit. So typically I’ll say, Let’s do come in and eat lunch with me the next three days and work on one concept a day, and we’ll just knock out the test over the three concepts that way. So that’s another option too, but that’s how I handle tests. So basically, you have to make up notes, and you need to make up tests everything else I’m going to work with you on, and you’re going to be exempted from IT grade wise. Now let’s talk about labs. One of the questions I’ve seen a lot about labs is not just how you have them make them up, but people asking, How do I do makeup labs that are equally as challenging as the one I do in class? So my thing would be, don’t, don’t do makeup labs. And here’s why I feel like coming up with an administering Labs is already such a big ordeal, and then to have to come up with an additional substitute lab that is equally as challenging is such a waste of your limited capacity and time and energy like that, is so not worth it. I personally never really do makeup labs, and that is because of not being able to, literally, I didn’t have the space to store the supplies. I was floating at times in other people’s classrooms, so I couldn’t, then expect them to be storing my stuff when they’re doing their own labs. And they’ve already accommodated me coming in there and switching classrooms for a class period. And then, of course, like lack of time and stuff. Literally, if you floated in any capacity, you know, like, doing a makeup lab is like, basically impossible, and that’s kind of one of the places I started off on. So that kind of set the precedent, like, I’m not doing makeup labs now. And here’s how I kind of justify that. For those of you that are, like, internally screaming, because you’re like, they have to spend 40% of their time in lab. Okay, I get it. We are spending 40% of our time in lab. It’s not my fault that they weren’t here for that. I’m not going to be a martyr to the cause of other people’s absences. That is something so outside of my control. So I’m going to control what I can control. And if I’m going to be expected to do makeup labs, and I should have a full lab setup, and I should have lab tech assistant that can help me maintain and keep multiple labs up as once, especially if you have three or more preps, you probably are at the place where you’re having multiple labs happening, or at least a different lab every day in a different class. In terms of the frequency of your labs, you literally can’t keep all these different things set up. It just doesn’t work. My encouragement to you, and my justification for this is most likely. If you are anything like me, you’re doing plenty of labs and plenty of hands on resources, so they’re getting those skills in other labs and in other ways. Now, if there’s like, a very specific skill that they miss, like they miss the day of titrations, and you were like, they must learn how to do a titration, then I would just say, hey, you need to stay after school one day, and I’m going to show you to do this, and we’ll collect some mock data, but like, that’s it. I’m not going to sweat it. I’m not going to have them start the lab and do it from start to finish. I’m going to just have them experience that skill, and then we’re going to move on from it. So here’s what I will say too, about makeup labs. If you teach, like, around a 50 minute class period, I always recommend stretching your labs over about two and a half days. And so typically, they’re not going to miss the entire lab. They’ll miss one part of it, and you just have them dive in wherever they’ve missed out. Okay? So for example, I have about a quarter of a class period, maybe a half day, that I call Lab Day Zero, and that’s when we’re going over the lab and kind of going through the introduction, getting prepped for it and what’s going to happen. Sometimes that’s a little bit longer of a preparation period, depending on how inquiry based the lab is. Other days, it’s more cookie cutter, so we’re just kind of reading through it and getting ready to jump in and seeing if they have any questions. That’s Day Zero. If anyone misses day zero, it is not a big deal at all. They will just jump in day one, into a lab group. Day one, we will be in our lab groups. I will draw sticks. Day one is our data collection. Day The only goal of my day one of my labs for my students, is to collect data and clean up the lab period. That’s the only goal. Day two, we graph, we analyze. We conclude that is always how I structure my labs. I have found it is worth it to stretch them out over a longer period of time, it makes them way less stressful. Students aren’t stressed about getting the right data. They’re not stressed about doing it right or wrong. It becomes the learning experience that a lab is supposed to be, which is taking your time, thinking through it, working on it. So if a student misses Day Zero, like I said, No problem. They’re thrown in a group. Day one, the roommates will get them caught up. They miss day one, which is data collection day but they’re here. Day Zero. Day two, that’s fine. Day two, they’re gonna get the class data from everyone else, and then they’ll be put in a group to work on the graph analysis and conclusion, it’s still a valuable tool for them to work on those skills, even if they weren’t there for data collection. Again, if it’s a skill that you’re like, wow, they really needed to learn, though, how to use the Bunsen burner or how to do a titration. Have them stay after class and just show them. Let them run it a couple times by themselves, and then call it they don’t need to add data to the cost data. Most likely, you’re getting plenty of cost data. And so then I’m jumping them in for day two, if they’re there day zero, day one, and they get the data, but they just miss day two. They can work on the graph, analysis and conclusion at home. Okay, they can easily do that because they already have the class data. So that’s how I handle the absences on labs for those short class periods. Now, if you have 90 minute class periods, or you just have a student that misses like day one and day two, so they miss like the entire two days you do the lab, I would you have two options here. You can exempt them from the entire lab, and you need to use your discretion on if that’s a wise choice for the student’s grade and all that. Or you give them the class data, and you expect them to catch up on the rest on their own, and they can come in and work on it with you and tutoring and all of that. Again, the more you’re going to have them do, the more work that is on you to keep up with it and all that and make sure they’re getting it all done. But that is how I would personally handle it if you’re wanting them to make up the lab. Now for a class that’s like, maybe an AP Bio class or something, or an AP Chem where these labs maybe hold a greater weight, I will say for me, my AP Bio Labs were like a week long because they were just so in depth. So it was so rare that a student ever missed an entire lab like I don’t even think that ever once happened or they missed the full week of it. So I will say, though, but if you feel like your labs hold greater weight, or if you just feel really strongly about them making up the lab and that being the most important thing, and you have the space and capacity to keep your lab set up and have them run it themselves and do it.

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I think that’s totally fine. That’s your prerogative. You’re going to need to have some give or take somewhere else if you want to have some work life balance here. But at the very least, do not rewrite the lab. I think it’s borderline insanity to write makeup labs. What’s the point? Are you just trying to prevent them from cheating? Your Students should never, ever feel motivated to cheat on a lab, because we should be training them from day one that there’s no such thing as doing a lab, quote, unquote, right and getting right answers. Labs are about experience. They’re about skills. They’re about exploration. They’re about asking questions and thinking critically. You can get, quote, unquote bad data and still have a great lab experience. So there’s no reason a student should ever, ever, ever be cheating on a lab. I tell them that all the time, we need to take that pressure off of them right now, from that, and I have a lot of thoughts about cheating, there’s an entire episode of the podcast on it, Episode 94 that I’ll link in the show notes. But please y’all do not waste your energy rewriting labs, because. Let’s be real, the kid that’s going to cheat on a lab is going to find a way to cheat no matter what. So please Don’t waste another second of your life trying to rewrite labs or come up with good makeup labs or stuff like that. If you really think they need to make up the lab, then find a way for them to make up the OG lab in some way. But I’ve already kind of shared with you, you know, how I kind of handle that. Okay, now, what do we say about handling when you’re absent and or let’s say you teach three sections of anatomy, and you know your first anatomy section of the day misses it because there’s some sort of assembly or a pep rally or some sort of homecoming event or whatever. So what do you do? Are you going to prioritize keeping all the sections on pace? Or kind of what you’re going to be your priority there? Again, this is personal, but for me personally, I care more about keeping classes in the same prep and the same section at the same pace than I care about slowing down two sections for the sake of one so for me personally, because it makes my life so much simpler organizationally, especially, like I said, because I’ve had limited space, I cannot have the same lab running over like five days, but in three different classes, like they all need to collect data on the same day so I can clean up all of that, and the next day we move on. So for me personally, I want them to all be on the same page. So I would rather slow down the two sections of the classes that are in person, then make the missed class catch up. Okay. Now, if I am absent, I will link in the show notes. I have two podcast episodes I’ve done in the past about sub plans or worth like you, like a long term absence or something like that. But if I’m ever absent. Typically, we’re usually doing enough activities in labs that I can kind of, if it’s a pre arranged absence, I can kind of make it work where, like, okay, the day I’m gone, they’re going to be doing like, a guided inquiry learning activity, like a pogal, or they’re going to be working on the lab write up from when I was here yesterday, doing data collection, or, worst case, I have them watch a lecture video. So instead of me lecturing when I’m in class, I’ll have them watch a lecture video, take the notes on it, and then do a practice page or some other reinforcement or work on their study guide. For me, because that’s something they can always be working on. For me, if this is a situation where, like, just six periods missing, but the other classes are here for the day, I’m just going to be doing all that live with them. I’ll lecture live, you know, they’ll take notes live. They’ll work on the practice on their own. They’ll work on their study. I gotta have a little bit more independent work time that day, whereas the other class, you know, will have to do that at home, or that’s if I’m absent another thing, like I said, they could be working on a lab write up, or an activity, reflection, or something like that. Now, if it’s the interruption, you know, where just one section’s getting out, I often will give the other class periods extra day to work on their lab, like an in class research day for a project that they’re doing outside of school, a catch up day, or maybe like a bonus review day. And then that’s when I’m here, and two of the classes are here, but one class isn’t, so I just kind of like pause the other two classes so we all stay on the same pace. That’s my personal opinion. I think that’s what works best. So that’s what I would recommend for that now, how are you dealing with mid year student transfers? This is a question I’ve seen a lot too, and I had a lot of experience with this at my first school, because I was in a very large county with 14 public schools, and we had an alternative school that students would get sent to for disciplinary issues, and they had to be released from that alternative school every 45 days. They couldn’t stay there longer than that. So often, every 45 days, we would get an influx of anywhere from one to three to five, you know, new students over the course of all your classes coming from alternative school. So obviously, if I when I was in the classroom full time, I used my own resources. So I would give those students that come in they’ve just missed the last 45 days. Lord only knows what they were learning there. I assume nothing whatever they’ve missed. Or this could be, it doesn’t have to be an alternative school day. It could be someone who moves from across the state in the middle of October and they’ve missed the first two months of school, however much they have missed, whether it’s a semester, a month, whatever, I print out the filled in packets for every unit that they’ve missed, so the notes are all filled in there. Oftentimes, I’ll pull out the labs and stuff just so it’s not as many pages, but I’ll leave practice problems, and I’ll leave in the filled in packets, and I say, this is what we’ve covered. I recommend reading through these, watching these lecture videos you missed, working through some of these practice problems. I’m happy to do these anytime with you, doing tutoring. And then the other thing I give them is I had a student one year make absolutely beautiful and thorough study guides. And so with her permission, I scanned in her study guides every time she turned them in. And so then I would give those to students to also have as like a catch up tool, like for them to study off of say, Hey, here’s like the spark knowns version of everything we’ve kind of done. And then I just tell them, just dive in, do the best you can. I’m not gonna have you make up any of this work for a great we’re gonna exempt you from all of it. But. Like just try to catch up as best you can. It’s not going to be easy, but these are extenuating circumstances, and I often find in extenuating circumstances, we as teachers become martyrs, and we kill ourselves to try to catch up these students. And I don’t know if that’s necessarily our responsibility. Yes, I think we give them support. We give them tools. I would never give another student all those pre done study guides, you know we offer to tutor them. I will be here every single day, three to 330 I would love to help you, or you can come eat lunch with me anytime since you’re behind, and I’ll help you catch up on things. But like, you can either show up and use the resources I’m giving you and come to tutoring or not. Like that is up to you. And I’ve also found that with how I set up my gradebook, these students, even if they miss, like, a bunch of background knowledge, they can still, at a minimum, with very little effort, at least, still pass my class, which is a lot of just some of their goals. And then for the students that want to get an A or B or whatever, they’re going to put in the work to catch up. And so I talk a lot about that in my assessments mini course, virtual. PD, so I’ll link that in the show notes too, if you want to hear more about more about grading and all of that jazz. Okay, speaking of when teachers are absent, because I mentioned that a little bit ago. Meaningful sub plans, especially for those of you with block schedules, 80 or 90 minutes. I love an 80 or 90 minute class period. I love it so much more than a 50 minute honestly, for every reason, though, except for absences. Like when a teacher is absent, it’s double the makeup work you have to leave and students absent is double. It feels like they miss. So that is the part where having that block schedule is not the greatest, but I recommend leaving again. Like I said, lecture video, some sort of reinforcement. I have them work on their study guide, and then I just do a quick overview of the lecture, you know, hit the highlights, and we dive right back in when I get there, into whatever lab it is that I want them to do. But I have a lot of ideas too, especially if you need last minute sub plan ideas that are still worthwhile. Again, those are episodes 16 and 117 so I’ll link those in the show notes, so you guys can check those out for sub plans. Last but not least, we got to talk about chronic absenteeism. I know this is getting long, but like, I know this is really hard to manage, especially with your extending due dates. Has it been more than five days? How do I handle this? So some of this we’ve already kind of talked about with general absences, but the thing that I think is most important about chronic absenteeism is, first and foremost, you need to bring in admin, school counselor and parents ASAP. There needs to be more people involved. You cannot be alone in dealing with this. This is not on you. So they need to be brought in ASAP, because this is going to be an issue. If they’re not, they’re not probably just missing your class. They’re missing lots. So this needs to be like a team effort. How are we going to see this kid to the finish line? Also, there needs to be a school policy on this exact thing, and every teacher needs to implement it across the board. So my other recommendation is you follow that. So if the school says that they get five makeup days or whatever, that’s what you give them. What I like to do is I use the online grade book, like I mentioned earlier, kind of as like my tracking system of absences. So if they miss that day at the end of the day, I’m always updating my website, updating my online gradebook. I would go in and I would go ahead and mark the X or the E to exempt them from anything non essential. And then if it’s something they do need to make up, like it’s a test or no, this is, like one of the most important labs of the year. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna make the space, I’m gonna hold the supplies, I’m going to keep it set up till they can make it up. Then I would put an M for missing. And an M in our grade books always automatically calculated. It weighed in as a zero. But it was nice, because when you see a zero that feels like it’s permanently a zero, but an M feels like, oh, it’s missing. There’s still an opportunity to replace this M. And I will say this. My schools have always had policies about like, if it’s unexcused, they don’t get to make it up, or if excused, they get five days, something like that. I will say this, that is the one thing I don’t worry about. I don’t care if it’s excused or unexcused,

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I just treat it all the same. It’s too hard for me to keep up with. Like, Were you sick, or were you on a pre planned family vacation? Or did you know you had this JV basketball tournament, I can keep up with it. You’re all going to get the chance to do the makeup work. I just want all the work that you do have to make up. So any M’s I say, have to be made up by the day of the unit test. So I don’t even really necessarily worry about the five day thing, like, especially if they’re absent a lot, because at that point it’s like, okay, they missed this random day. So that assignment’s Five. They’ve got till, you know, October 20 on that assignment, but they have to october 28 on this like, I can’t keep up with that. You can put a note in your grade book and say, like, Hey, you have until this date to make it up. That’s up to you. I just would put the M and say, You have until the unit test to make this up, because my hope is that you’re doing the work to learn the content by the time we have the summative assessment on it, once we’ve had that unit test. One, I’m not grading stuff from Unit One in December. That’s insanity. Two, it’s not even helping you. If you’re doing it that late, you’re probably just like scrounging and finding people’s old graded work to copy. So for me, my goal is, like, do this work by the unit test. I’ll put the grade in for you, and that I feel like it’s worked out for me, that it’s a nice balance of grace in terms of, like, I’m not, I’m not going to be on you about this five day thing. Just get it to me by the end whenever the unit test is but it’s a balance of grace, but it’s also, I’m not going to again martyr myself to help you make this up, and I’m not going to be killing myself grading y’all. One of my first years, we had a chronic absentee problem. It was like an extenuating circumstance, a student with long term complex health things and some anxiety related to that that made coming to school really hard, to the point that this student ended up being homebound. And that was the most successful solution. I think if we had gotten admin and school counselor involved way sooner, and us teachers had really rallied and pushed them to get involved, because they were all kind of like, just help them, until we really pushed them to get this student the homebound care they needed, they didn’t do it. So I think we could have intervened a little bit sooner on that, and that is on us, but in the meantime, I will never forget this poor child, it came to this child sat down for their midterm examiner, and they had missed three unit tests that were never made up, and their parent just said, give them all in the same day. So this kid sat there and did a midterm for me and then did three unit tests. It was insane. It was not serving that student. And so that’s where I’m saying, like the accountability is good for them. And you’d be like, hey, there’s grace here. I’m not worried about the five days. The five days, but I do want you to do it by x date. The one thing I did do the five days for was the test. So like, Okay, if you miss a test, I think you need to make it up as soon as you get back. But not legally, because this is the school, but based on the school policy, policy wise, you have five days, so you have to make it up by this day. And if you don’t, I’m coming, I would tell students, I’m coming to your theater class, I’m coming to visual arts, I’m coming to weightlifting, and I’m pulling you out to take this test. And they knew, and they they would show up. Y’all, you’re you’re I almost said your students specials teachers, because I have a first grader, and they call it specials, but your kids like your students, elective teachers. They know which kids are absent, too, and I’m not saying you’re pulling them out of art every day. You’re not gonna like you don’t want the art teacher to hate you, but these are, again, extenuating circumstances, and you can kind of give them a heads up on that, but that is what I do about tests, also, for those chronic absent students and just really all of their grades. Again, I just want to focus on the absolute basics to get these kids to pass my course. That’s what I want for them, like I said, for me, typically, my biggest problem with absenteeism was either a student who had a complex health issue and eventually just got to the point like that student needed homebound care, and so it was really pushing admin and school counselors to get them that care that they needed. And my honestly, this sounds like crazy, but it was absenteeism because of sports and activities like them just missing so much because they were so involved. And so that’s where I think really training them and how you’re using your gradebook. And the notation of like, M means missing. You got to make that up. X means you’re exempt, so you hold yourself accountable to what you need to do here. Okay, but again, see what your school policy is. I don’t want you to feel the onus to figure this all out on your own. If we’re all doing the same thing, it makes it a lot easier. And the last thing I want to say before I let you go is, what is your responsibility here? I think oftentimes we assume more of a role on this than we should, and so I want to encourage you, if you missed episode 123, it was what to do when you care more than your students. I would go and give that one a listen, because I think that could help you if you’re already two or three months in the school year and feeling just totally drained by keeping up with all these absences. So I hope at this point in your school year you haven’t had to deal with this too much yet, but I’m sure it’s inevitably going to come. I know October is like homecoming month in the United States, pretty much everywhere. So you’re probably going to have at least some missed sections of classes or, you know, hopefully not, but your kid might get the flu and you might be out. So hopefully, all this large conversation about absenteeism, whether it’s you, your students, whatever, has been helpful, and if this episode did equip you, and you feel like you are more ready to manage absences in a better way this school year, I would love it if you left a review for the podcast. It truly makes me so happy when I see you all’s five star reviews in your comments. So I would love it if you would do that. And I referenced a lot of other podcast episodes in this one, you can find clickable links for those in the show notes. At, it’s not rocket science classroom.com/episode, 152 all right, teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher. Head to, it’s not rocket science classroom.com/challenge. To grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, Teacher friend. You.