3 Simple Steps to Support Chronically Absent Students

Guest Blog Post by Robert Barnett

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a student who has been sick recently. You stayed home from school on Monday and Tuesday. Today is Wednesday, and you’re coming back to class.

I don’t know about you, but when I think about this, it’s stressful! As a student, I always hated missing class. I didn’t know what I had missed while I was out, but I knew that I would probably be lost when I returned. After all, I had missed Monday’s and Tuesday’s lessons.

This situation is also stressful for teachers. When I was a teacher, I never knew what to do with students when they returned after absences. If I moved ahead with Wednesday’s lesson, I knew students who missed Monday and Tuesday would be lost. But if I paused to re-teach content from Monday and Tuesday, the students who had been there those days would get bored.

It was a no-win situation for me and my students. And unfortunately, with rates of chronic absenteeism on the rise, it’s a situation that’s more and more common each year.

Fortunately, however, there’s a way you can address it.

What Chronically Absent Students Need

You’ve just imagined how it feels to be a student returning from absence. Now consider: what kind of learning experience would meet your needs?

In my opinion, chronically absent students should always be able to:

1. Pick up where they last left off. This prevents learning gaps from forming. If the last lesson I saw was on Friday, I should start with Monday’s lesson when I return to class – even if it happens to be Wednesday.
   
2. Catch up easily outside of class. Make-up work packets are rarely effective on their own, and it isn’t fair to expect students who miss class to stay after school to catch up. (That’s not fair to their teachers either!) Instead, students should be able to catch up independently, at home or anywhere else.

Students who can do these things can succeed even if they’ve missed class. Teachers who make this possible will no longer need to worry about disrupting their lessons when students who were previously absent arrive. Those students can get straight to work!

Of course, creating lessons like these is easier said than done. So, how can you actually do it?

A Three-Step Approach

There are three things you should do to support chronically absent students.

1. Digitize direct instruction. If you explain new concepts live in class, absent students will miss out. If you can provide the same explanations in short, focused videos, students can learn anywhere, anytime. Plus, you never have to repeat that explanation! You can also spend your time in class working closely with your students. That’s much more fun than lecturing, anyway.

2. Require mastery. Asking students to learn content for which they are unprepared is counterproductive. That forms learning gaps and damages students’ confidence and self-esteem. Before a student advances to Tuesday’s lesson, you should make sure that the student truly understands Monday’s content. The best way to do this is with a Mastery Check: a brief, just-in-time assessment that shows whether a student is ready to advance. If the student shows understanding, they move on; if not, they revise and reassess. That way, you know that students are always appropriately challenged.

3. Track and communicate progress. Some students will inevitably advance faster than others, so you need some way to keep your students on track. A simple chart or spreadsheet can help here: you indicate when each student has achieved mastery, and then you have the data to know what each student should do next. You can also give students checklists or display a whole-class progress tracker to share that information with students.

The Modern Classrooms Project provides free and easy-to-use templates for video slides, Mastery Checks, Progress Trackers, and more!

This Helps Other Students Too

Classes that digitize direct instruction, require mastery, and track and communicate progress are great for chronically absent students. When those students return to class, they can simply pick up where they left off – and they can catch up using videos outside of class, too.

But here’s the best part. Classes like these are great for present students, too! With lessons like these, the advanced students in your class can progress as fast and far as possible, while the learners who need more time can take the time they need. Every learner can achieve mastery. You also get to spend your time working closely with your students, building relationships, and helping each learner achieve their potential.

Next Steps

Classrooms like these aren’t easy to create; they require commitment, patience, and compromise. You must balance the needs of your learners with the demands of your curriculum and convince your students and community to follow along. Redesigning instruction doesn’t happen overnight.

But there are thousands of educators all around the world who lead Modern Classrooms like these, and simple steps you can take to get started. Research shows that teachers implementing these practices are happier, and their students feel more capable.

So, if missing class causes you or your students stress, I hope you’ll join the Modern Classroom movement today!

Robert Barnett is a former teacher and the co-founder of the Modern Classrooms Project. His book, Meet Every Learner’s Needs, will be published later this month. You can learn more at www.meeteverylearnersneeds.org.