After being in the classroom for a couple of days, I realized that attendance is a major concern especially for first period. One day this week about a third of the students in the class were absent. The other days there was always at least one person absent. Having class without all the students present makes teaching difficult. At the end of class, my supervising teacher spends time going over the work she is missing from students. Being that middle school students are already reluctant to turn in their homework, retrieving work from absent students makes it even more difficult. I decided that I would see what I could find about attendance. I think it is so crucial for the students to be in school. It is hard to learn when you have missed some of the material.
One of the first websites I found was http://www.nwrel.org/request/2004june/. I found this after looking at the Indiana Department of Education website. The website had great information on why students don't attend school and strategies to encourage attendance. The website says that poor attendance may be an indicator of a student who may drop out of high school. This shows that improving attendance at the middle school is crucial so that students stay in school as opposed to opting to drop out when they have the chance to in high school.
By searching google for ways to improve attendance, I was able to find a few resources. One resource that I found was at http://www.education-world.com/a_admin/admin/admin442.shtml. This explained some ways for teachers to use incentive programs to improve attendance at different levels. I found this website useful for information for my future classroom.
I also used the state website to find data on attendance. The data said that the middle schools with the higher attendance rates alos had the higher percentage of students who passed both parts of the ISTEP. That may not be a surprising statistic, but I think it proves the significance of attendance to success in school. I found this information on data about attendance at http://www.doe.state.in.us/asap/data.html.
Attendance is a major concern. I think it is important for teachers to discuss with their students their reasoning for missing school. Sometimes it may not be the student's fault. As a teacher, I hope to just be supportive and show each student the value of being in class.
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This is also a major concern in my class. It always seems to be the same students too. We had one boy who was new to the school and was here one day. He has never been back since. It is really scary to see parents letting their children do this and not taking control of it.
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