Teachers - when a student goes on vacation, do you assign work?

[MrsPete]

One, it a vacation. Regardless of the fact that it's during school time, it's still special time with family.

Regardless of whether it's vacation or not, the state says WE MUST teach the kids certain things in the course of our class. We don't have the luxury of just excusing students from certain lessons. For example, a student might miss the week when I teach poetry terms; those terms are still going to show up on the end-of-course test -- I can't say, "Oh, just skip those questions. The state won't care!"

I'm sure elementary school is different, but the habits they learn there will carry over to high school. If the kids learn in elementary school that it's okay to just "blow off" a week or two, that habit will hurt them once they reach high school. They really DO need to make up everything the other kids did in class that week. Taking a child out of school SHOULD mean making a commitment to help him keep current with whatever he's missed, but most parents don't see that as their job -- they figure the teacher will help the child catch up.

Lastly, I don't really think it's fair to ask a teacher to do a lot of extra work for a student who has a family choosing to remove them from school.

You're right, it's not fair, but our job doesn't end at 2:30. We already spend lots of time after school providing extra help to students -- those who've been out sick, those who just didn't quite get it in the first place -- but it is VERY frustrating for teachers to see families CHOOSE to take their kids out, then expect us to give up our own time to help those kids catch up. And, oh, parents DO expect us to give up our own time for this purpose.

 

[SeaSpray]

I teach kindergarten right now, so there's really no point. (Though I have had parents ask. I tell them to read with their child. ) But it got me wondering what I'd do at older grades.

I can't help thinking I wouldn't assign work for a few reasons. One, it a vacation. Regardless of the fact that it's during school time, it's still special time with family. Two, other then maybe journal writing it seems like much of the work would be "busy work." Worksheets that cover what the class is doing isn't nearly the same as the lessons taught in class.

Lastly, I don't really think it's fair to ask a teacher to do a lot of extra work for a student who has a family choosing to remove them from school. Part of that choice is knowing the student is missing lessons and weighing that the vacation is more important. (This is not a judgment of the parents, just a statement of fact.)

Anyway, if you're a teacher what do you do when it comes to a student leaving for a week or two to vacation?

I'm not a teacher but your thread caught my eye because it reminded me of when we took our DSs to WDW in 2001; DS-then 13 was in 7th grade, and DS-then 10 was in 4th grade.

Both DSs were excellent students, and here is how their teachers handled it:

DS-7th grade had to make the 2 tests that he missed while we were gone, and he had to turn in a paper or two (IIRC one of them was a book reading summary, can't remember the other), but these papers didn't have to be turned in until a week after we returned. Since he was in middle school he had several different teachers, but the principal is the one who decided how the missed work would be handled.

DS-4th grade had an awesome teacher! She said to me "Robby is an excellent student; if he were here I know he'd turn in every single homework assignment and he'd participate in class. I'm not going to give him any make-up work to do or to take with him, but he will have to take the 1 test that he'll miss while you're gone. I'm going to give him a blank journal and I'm going to ask him to jot down a few notes, maybe draw a few illustrations of his vacation, and he can share that with the class when he returns, if he wants to!".

I was so happy with this teacher! Before we left I told DS to ask her what her favorite Disney character was. She said "Minnie Mouse", so while we were in WDW we picked up some Minnie Mouse items for her such as a cute pen, a small beanie, some Minnie mints in a tin, etc etc. DS DID end up drawing pictures during our trip (I still have the journal. ) and he wrote a few lines each night, and he when he went back to class he got to talk about his trip for a few minutes and passed around his journal. I truly appreciated how this teacher handled our vacation. She was a wonderful teacher for other reasons too.

Now, having said all that, once they got to high school it was an entirely different matter. School policy states that ALL work MUST be made up when a student misses school due to vacation. It was at that point that DSs both told me that they didn't want to miss school to go on vacation anymore, and we honored their request by scheduling family trips during school break, and going on "DH and I" trips when the kids were in school.