for organizing and managing absent work" width="800" height="590" /> for organizing and managing absent work" width="800" height="590" />
In a perfect world, every student would be in class every single day. Sadly, I don’t teach in a perfect world. Last year, as I began teaching, I knew that I needed to have some way to organize the work that students missed.
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I ended up creating a “While You Were Out” Binder that turned out to be way too time consuming.
After about a week, I stopped using it, and I resorted to a really lazy method. If a student was absent, they would need to come see me at an appropriate time and ask for what they had missed. This works okay *if* I can locate the papers they need in the mess that I call my desk, *if* they remember to come ask for them, and *if* students understand what constitutes an appropriate time to ask. That is way too many “ifs.”
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This year, I’m trying something new for managing absent work. We’re not even a month into school yet, so I don’t know that this works in the long run, but this new system is definitely working better than last year’s system! On my cabinet, I have a hanging file box that says “Absent? Look here!” The first hanging file has a half-page form that I fill out for each student who was absent that day. I write their name, the date, and check off whatever they missed that day. If there are any handouts, I staple them to the back of the form. Since the amount of writing I have to do is minimized, I can get these done in a very small amount of time at the end of the day. Instead of dreading this end of day task, I actually look forward to it because it’s one of the easiest things to mark off my to-do list!
When students come to me and say they were absent, all I have to do is point to the box. I can also easily check and see what students are not picking up the assignments they missed.
