Picture this. You write all of your lesson plans late last night, to come into school to find 25 absent students are missing from their desks. Now what?
The first school I worked in was kind of a circus. Well, actually it was an Expeditionary Learning school, meaning that the kids often when on “Expeditions” to learn. Basically they’re field trips. And it felt like these kids were out on field trips nearly every day. Sometimes it was just the honors classes, or the tenth grade classes, or maybe just the top 100 kids in the grade. It was nearly impossible to keep up with who was going where and when. Not to mention the fact that they would let kids turn in permission slips the morning of the trip. Then I’d REALLY have no idea who was leaving. So this left me with a consistent problem: who is going to be in school tomorrow?
Common Times When You Will Have Absent Students
The day before or after a school break are going to be days where you will have high absence. This is for a few reasons. The first is sheer laziness, but probably more common is travel. Especially for break surrounding holidays, families will travel to be with each other and that result is absent students.
Be mindful of times where germs are running rampant through your school. This could be the ever dreaded stomach virus all the way up to and including the flu. When there is a lot of absence in another grade or wing of the school building, look out, because it is likely coming your way.
End of the school year, there will be random days where your high schoolers are going to disappear. Whether it is an organized “cut school” day or not, expect your students, especially upperclassmen to simply skip school. If prom happens to be on a school night, kids will skip school to get ready. Most proms around my area are on Thursday nights, since renting out the venue is cheaper. I’ve also had kids take off school to get their hair and makeup done for senior portraits. I find that one funny since I took my pictures with no makeup and barely ran a brush through my hair.
End of the school year for the little guys too! When it comes to the end of the school year, you will have families with graduations, kids coming home from college and awards ceremonies. Most of these things should be happening after school hours or on the weekends, but expect parents to keep kids home.
What to do when your classroom is empty
There are plenty of takes on what you should do when have a lot of absent students. I honestly prefer to keep things moving and teach the few students in front of me. I have some flexibility here considering that I teach high school. Plus I’m allowed to expect that kids get the work done on their own time. I’ll just take all of my leftover copies and dump them in these rainbow folders in the back of my classroom for them to pick up when they get back.
I have a few other tips in the podcast episode. I’ve used all of the tips and fall back to different ones depending on the time of year and the individual kids that are sitting in front of me. My always backup plan? Read a picture book and have a group discussion. Yeah, a high school chemistry teacher reading picture books sounds crazy, but here’s my list and some details on how I do it.
*This post contains affiliate links, meaning that if you make a purchase through the link I make a small commission, though this does not affect the price of the item for the customer.
