My family was supposed to go to Disney World in November. We had planned the big vacation for a year and thought by going in November during Election Day and the Teacher’s Convention, it was perfect because our kids would have only missed two days of school. Then Hurricane Sandy happened and we lost power for 8 days. Then a Nor’easter was coming up the coast the day we were to fly down to Florida. After all the stress of the week, we decided to move our trip to another time. In a couple of months, we’ll be going to Disney but now our kids will have to miss 5 days of school—a full school week.
We’ve never taken our kids out of school for vacation and I feel guilty. I keep telling myself they are in kindergarten and 3rd grade—so I doubt they will be falling behind. I also plan to tell their teachers early so we can collect homework (mostly for my 3rd grader) and any other stuff we’ll need. But still, the former teacher in me frowns upon taking kids out of school.
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Well, since you ask: I don’t like it, and I will try to avoid it. And it’s the parent and the child’s responsibility to let the teachers know WITH NOTICE that the child will be leaving and to collect work (and hand in work early that will be due) for when they are away. A few times I had kids (I taught high school) come up on a Friday afternoon and casually mention they were going to (somewhere) for a week or so and “Could I get the work?” Well, no. I don’t have the copies made yet and I have classes through the rest of the day and how about the project that is due on Monday and we were going to hand out new books to the class on Tuesday and on and on and on.
And if there is a quiz or a test that needs to be made up, please say thank you to the teacher who gives up lunch to first go over the missed work and then another to supervise while the child sits and takes the make-up test.
I was always happy to do it all, but I could have done without the attitude from parents and students if work wasn’t ready the same day they told me they needed it. Emergencies are different, of course, but ironically, families were usually much more conscientious in those cases.
Ahhhh. I feel better now. (Not directed to you, of course, GG. Just in general.)