Guilty as charged

On Friday afternoon the entire school had a meeting to discuss the shockingly low attendance rate on Friday and why it is occurring.

Our entire school has a definite cycle where on a half-day students don't bother coming to school.  This is for a variety of reasons, but the main one is probably because they don't think we will be doing anything of use on the half-day.  Now unfortunately they are largely right.  Classes don't do much of value on the half-day.

The question is: why aren't teachers doing more on half days?  The answer: because students aren't showing up, and if you do too much that day you will probably just have to re-teach it to the class when they show up the next class day.  So we have this cycle of low expectations that has to be broken, and the students aren't going to be (and shouldn't have to be) the first ones to break it.

Thinking about this I realized I am guilty of fulfilling this low-expectations of turn-out on the recordkeeping day this year.  I planned a survey and work period for projects into my curriculum because I knew many students wouldn't show up.  Therefore students still got credit for coming, but we didn't cover any new material.

This compromise is probably too large, and I will do better to make half-days more essential for the class to try and force them to come.  But here's the dilemma: If I do that, and then the rest of the classes are a waste of time, then it will really just further reinforce the idea that it is useless to come to school on those days.  Therefore we really need to come together as a staff and make this happen.

Now I'm going to go die on the floor laughing at the idea that a bunch of teachers who can barely muster up the energy to show up to work on time will actually teach a real lesson on a half-day.  Man this staff is making me pessimistic.  Good thing I have a meeting w/Ms. Rhee at the end of this month to try and change them by force.  If bottom up won't work, then top-down it is!