Chapter nine was about when students feel discouraged, alone, or uncared for. This chapter was particularly sad because I know/knew kids who fit these adjectives, but I would have dubbed them as shy or lazy or rebellious. The passage that said “Especially in large and crowded high schools…checking up on attendance becomes an administrative task, not an expression of personal concern” popped out at me.
This popped out at me because it was really true, and I’d never given the “send the attendance to the office” task as anything but that, a task. The problem with this is that there is no personal reaching out to the student absent. Usually when a kid misses a lot of school the teachers are usually thinking about how much w0rk they’re going to miss, and how much of a pain in the butt it’s going to be to get them caught up again. The office, especially in high school, just keeps tabs to see if they will be allowed to move on to the next year because of all the absences. No one actually cares about whether the student is alright or not. This is something that needs to change.
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