At Park, students miss school and classes every day for a variety of reasons. Regardless of the reasons that a student misses school, the effects that missing school has on students remain the same in most cases.
English teacher Chris Nordmark said there’s a lot of different reasons he thinks students miss school, and that it differs from student to student.
“I think there’s probably as many reasons as there are students,” Nordmark said. “Illness is probably number one. (Then) mental health and also bodily illness. Vacations is a pretty big one, especially this time of year.”
Junior Declan Gaines said he thinks it is difficult to make up for lost time at school. He said when he misses school, all of the different assignments and lessons that he missed add up and make it difficult to catch up.
“I think in classes we move on so quickly that once we are behind on past work, we still have to focus on current work and it just kind of mixes up,” Gaines said.
Junior Crew Lund said he communicates with his teachers to make sure that he knows what the class did while he was gone. He said he doesn’t worry about it if something is done in class and he can’t anymore.
“I just always ask my teachers about what we did and email them and try to stay up to date and communicate with them,” Lund said. “Then I try to do as much as I can do. If there’s something I can’t do, and I’m not in control of it, I don’t worry about it.”
Gaines said testing in the classes that he missed is harder. He said when you miss lessons, you miss necessary information that you will need when you are taking a test, which the absence of that makes testing more challenging.
“If you miss school, then odds are you’re probably missing work or a lesson that’s going to show up on the test and test day you’re not going to know how to do something,” Gaines said.
Lund said he finds it harder to take tests when he misses school. He said if you communicate with teachers and stay on top of your work, that it makes it easier.
“There’s definitely some struggles that come with it,” Lund said. “But if you prepare well, communicate through teachers well, and just make sure you’re caught up, I think you can still have access and be fine.”
Nordmark said he uses Schoology to help keep students up to date and he fills them in on what the class had been doing while they were gone.
“I do my best to acknowledge that they were gone and welcome them back and fill them in with what we were doing,” Nordmark said. “I try to keep up with Schoology, so when anyone’s away without even notice they can look on Schoology and find things that they’re missing. Sometimes students email me and that makes it really easy to be in touch with them.”
