Teaching in the New "Student Absence" Landscape

The challenges of maintaining classroom community amidst rising absences

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and I want to begin here: if you’re a teacher, I appreciate you. Full-stop, plain-and-simple.

Some things can’t be said enough.

In thinking about what I wanted to write as a reflection this week, however, I kept coming back to a struggle that has been present on my mind as a teacher for some time now: increased student absences.

I very much believe that appreciating one’s experience means seeing it fully—and in that spirit I think, especially this week, we need to name just how draining this year has been as a teacher in the “new normal” of frequent and widespread absences in our classrooms.

This isn’t a post that examines the factors leading to increased student absences (it’s super complicated) or even one that posits solutions (though I’d love some). This also most definitely isn’t a post criticizing students—it is impossible to know for certain why a student isn’t in a classroom on a given day, and that conversation deserves to be had with utmost empathy and generosity especially when teachers are the ones having it.

Rather, I just want to name what this year has been like from the vantage point as a teacher in hope that it helps paint a picture of just how draining it has been, in ongoing hindsight somehow, to do this work of teaching in the landscape we are in.

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First, then, let’s name the problem:

Recently, I was sitting down to plan out seating charts for our final unit of the year, and kept running into the same problem: where to group students who I hadn’t seen in two weeks? Or only once in the past three?

Looking at the attendance breakdown of one class before beginning their seating chart, I just sat back and sighed.

This is a problem.

The story around student absences nationwide is very consistent, too: it is a problem that escalated severely during the peak of COVID-19 and, perhaps most importantly, has not improved since.

• From NPR last month: “In a survey of 21 school districts in rural, suburban and urban areas, NPR found most districts – from New York City to Austin, Texas, to Lawrence, Kan. – still had heightened levels of chronic absenteeism.”

• From the Public Policy Institute of California last month: “Thirty percent of California public school students were chronically absent from school in 2021–22—a near tripling of the percentage in 2018–19.”

• From NY Times last summer: the percentage of students who were on track to be chronically absent [in Winter 2022] was about 22 percent — more than double the rate of chronically absent students before the pandemic.

I also think going into this year a lot of us had hope that it would shift back to pre-March-2020 norms, but that just has not been the case.

And that has very much changed what is asked of teachers when the bell rings and we look across the classroom at so many empty desks.

That this has become a pattern has also meant that the exhaustion that comes with it for teachers has been normed as well, which can manifest in far too many ways.

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“Um, I don’t really even know where to start.”

In previous years, the occasional student being absent wasn’t that much of an ask for a teacher. Especially if they’ve been in class and on track, all it took was a place in the room to swing by and grab what they missed (my favorite: a stapled manila folder for each class period with work from previous lessons) and then a quick conversation at some point in class.

Simple, right?

Except now that one student who is absent is often at least 4-5 for each class, which means 4-5 of those “quick” conversations regularly. However, those conversations aren’t all the same, either, as 2 of those students missed the class before that, too, and another one is back in the room after not attending for the past 2 weeks.

Then you take a look at the grade book and you immediately—even acknowledging this context—feel like a failure yourself as a teacher to see so many students struggling academically. (And while I am fortunate not to be in this situation personally, I know that for many other teachers this leads to increased pressure and criticism as far as why “so many students aren’t passing,” etc. that one can feel helpless to respond to when so much of this is directly linked to attendance.)

And as teachers who care deeply about helping students to be successful? It feels like swimming into a tidal wave, somehow collapsing through, and then seeing another beginning to rise on the near horizon.

Again and again and again.

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“A reminder: the notes and assignments are posed online!”

In my 11th year of teaching, I have never before been more transparent and adaptable as far as doing the work to make sure materials are available for students who are absent.

This isn’t a flex—just a confident statement of fact, one that I’m sure is true for many teachers across the country who have learned from and leaned on the online resources and investments from remote learning platforms to continue to make available far more of their lessons and assignments than ever before.

This is a good thing, too! (Though in a separate post at some point I’d add that so much of this has quietly become “another ask” of teachers during the week without any additional time provided to do this work, but that’s for another day…)

However, this also has evolved into a paradox that I’ve heard countless teachers echo this year—one that deepens the exhaustion that is particularly felt at this time of the school year:

“I’ve never been more prepared to support students who have missed class in getting caught up; AND I’ve never had fewer students utilize the supports/materials when they are absent.”

More accessibility and flexibility than ever → Less students utilizing it than ever.

Again, though, the point of this post isn’t to criticize students. Part of this dynamic, I’m sure, goes back to the new “frequency of absence” landscape, as getting caught up after missing one day is much different than after several—let alone a week or more of class. Then you add how without adequate time being provided for teachers to prepare and post this work, I have zero doubt that it is a haphazard journey for students to figure out how each of their different teachers provides make-up opportunities remotely (if they do at all, in some cases?).

That said, the dynamic remains that on average teachers are working harder than ever to meet students where they are at and extend generosity and support to help them catch up—and the result of this, it seems from everything I’ve heard and read, is a recognition that far too few students are taking advantage of these pathways.

So as a teacher putting in that extra work to afford more flexibility? Yet another tidal wave of exhaustion in a year of those tidal waves.

Nevertheless, there is one more experience that perhaps is harder for me than all the others when it comes to the experience of a teacher in this landscape of increased absences: those empty desks.

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“Can you move to this seat? And can you move to this one?”

Going back to my seating chart reflection earlier, I very much value having students in partnership and collaboration with each other each class. I believe fully that the thriving classroom means students talking purposefully and enthusiastically with each other as much as possible, with the occasional guidance and facilitation from the teacher.

Yet when you have 15-25% of students absent on average in classroom, that means that numerous students begin the class sitting by themselves, one or both of their partners gone.

So then the carousel begins once the bell rings—a type of ritual this year in our classroom—with me trying to reconfigure the seats on the spot to get everyone sitting next to someone else.

“_______, can you move up to this desk? _______, if you would, can you shift over to this seat to sit with _______? _______, oh wait, I had you move last time! _______ can you move over next to _______ so they don’t have to move today…”

Every class period. Every day.

Yes, this is both tedious and tiring (note: these two things are basically synonyms of each other for this time of year as a teacher, in my experience!) but even more so I find it symbolic of what has bothered me for some time now: it is much harder to build classroom community when so many students aren’t in the classroom regularly.

I think anyone who reads my posts has a pretty good idea how much I prioritize and hold myself accountable as a teacher in trying to build and maintain classroom community, so this is the part of “teacher exhaustion” that sits with me at the deepest level.

The classroom community at this time of year as summer approaches is supposed to be at its best place, with students having built connections not just with the peers they knew but also those they didn’t know back in September.

It can be an incredible place.

This year? It still is, but there is an individuality within it that is felt especially now, when I am juxtaposing it against previous years.

_______, can you move up to this desk? _______, if you would, can you shift over to this seat to sit with _______?

Those empty desks take a toll on teachers because we know the toll they take on our classroom community.

They just do.

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So what do we do?

I have no idea.

Much is made of standardized test scores and learning loss and reading curricula right now in our education conversation nationally—but I’d argue that all of these, more than anything, are downstream of the shift we are continuing to experience as far as reduced student attendance.

So maybe the first step is centering our conversation more around this root cause than so many of the other debates?

I also know that as exhausting as this year has been as a teacher in trying to emphasize generosity and flexibility, I am that much more convicted that not only mindsets but also policies shaped around meeting students where they are and offering empathy as educators is 100% the direction we need to move. I refuse to let my exhaustion stand in for that conviction, and I will continue to advocate for more-equitable and more-responsive grading and pedagogy as much as I can.

Still, though, I think in this moment it is important to see and name what teachers are experiencing, and I wanted to use this space today to just spend time reflecting openly about the hard part of this work, especially this year.

I don’t know what a solution looks like or where to even start, but I do know what those empty desks have felt like this year as a teacher.

A tidal wave of exhaustion, again and again.

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As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read The Broken Copier, and I anticipate that our output will start to increase as this year comes to a close (and both Jim and I fend off our final stacks of digital essays). I know that I have several really cool systems and strategies that I plan on writing up and sharing at some point, and speaking of “cool shares” I definitely encourage you to check out the conversation Jim had with Elizabeth Jorgensen and Dr. Lucy Park about the “Sijo” poetry form that you can bring into your classroom!

Additionally, don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have other ideas/shares of what we can use this space to highlight and discuss, and more than anything take care of yourselves. This is “marathon work” as well as collective work, so don’t try to run too fast or run too much by yourself.

Have a good day, an excellent weekend, and a great final stretch to your school year!
—Marcus