A Missed Day of School Shouldn’t Leave a Student Behind

When a student is absent in a traditional school, it is a problem because now that student is behind. Behind the other students, behind in the curriculum, behind in their assignments – and it’s even more problematic if they missed a test during their absence. And, it all doubles when the student is absent for two days, and triples if absent for three, and so on. Yet, students need to be absent. It should be expected and accepted because they are human beings and human beings get sick, human beings experience loss, human beings’ schedules get impacted by their family’s schedules, and human beings sometimes just need to rest and disconnect to recharge. Yet, the traditional system punishes students when they are absent and the punishment they receive is stress and unrealistic expectations.

When a system is designed to treat no one as an individual and instead treat students as a collective entity that must learn the same content, at the same time, and develop at the same pace, the individual will always be unnecessarily punished.

In Learn to Start, we treat students as individuals. So, when a student is absent, they aren’t left behind. When they return, they continue their development from where they were. It’s their timeline of growth, not ours. They control their development and can learn to take time to take care of themselves or deal with issues as part of their balanced journey through life. Modeling life-long learning is so much more than curriculum. Do you remember any other ways that traditional schooling taught you the wrong lessons about life?