You’ve come down with the flu, and through the sickness, your mind vaguely recalls your English teacher mentioning an important in-class assignment due that day. You can’t remember the last time you had English, much less what the assignment is, so you text your friends. Alex tells you he missed class for a field trip. Colin says they “didn’t do much”. Grace explains that they “read some story” but doesn’t elaborate.
By the time your teacher responds to your email, informing you that your class analyzed a short story and turned in a written response, it’s already nine p.m. and your inbox is filled with similar messages from the other five classes you’ve missed. The rest of your week is spent trying to catch up on the missed work while keeping up with new material in class.
Situations such as these – unexpected absences that throw off schedules – are common in school and can have ripple effects on the quality of work and students’ grades. Yet the only mechanisms keeping absent students up to date either rely on their peers or the foresight to ask teachers what they’ve missed before they’re absent. Neither is guaranteed, which makes preventing these circumstances even more necessary
Teachers should post lesson plans ahead of time to allow students time to prepare for the week ahead, and ensure that absent students do not lag behind. While some teachers already post such announcements on their Google Classroom, this practice should be commonplace. While some may argue that lesson plans may change, the countless students they would help are certainly worth the slight possibility that teachers deviate from what was posted.
In the case of your unfortunate sickness, knowing what you would miss could’ve helped you plan ahead of time rather than scramble around after the fact. You could have emailed your teacher to make up the assignment, written the response on your own, or gotten a head start on other classes’ homework. Learning to juggle classwork from six different courses requires students to learn time management skills. Knowing what will be expected of them in each class, on any given day, would facilitate students’ efforts to prioritize tasks. Students would also have no excuse not to come to class prepared with the materials they need. Posting lesson plans ahead of time mitigates the chaos associated with absences, and allows students to take responsibility for their work.
