Absences involving illness and family emergencies are unavoidable. Please report all absences to the main office. Do not report absences directly to Mr. Cook.
Please note that in some cases, you may be required to provide documentation or evidence of the reason behind the absence. The office will be able to answer questions about this.
All students and families are strongly advised against taking absences for family trips or vacations outside of school breaks, including leaving early before normally scheduled school breaks.
Taking multiple days off for vacations, family trips, or other similar reasons can be considered unexcused absences. Unexcused absences can mean that your students may not be able to make up missed work, including graded work. Please note that IPSD does not recognize trips that may contain educational opportunities to be excused absences, and these may be added to student records as unexcused absences.
Also per IPSD policy, any student absent for 15 or more consecutive school days will be unenrolled from their classes and the district rosters. This will require you to re-enroll your student upon your return. Excessive absences may be reported to relevant officials and could result in students not being promoted to the next grade level.
Project Arrow absences
Absences in Project Arrow can be even more challenging to “make up” because our classes tend to be very discussion-based and it’s not possible for absent students to recreate the discussion on their own.
Families are always encouraged to avoid taking family vacations and trips on school days.
It is against school, district and classroom guidelines or practices to:
- Provide work that will be missed to students ahead of time
- Allow students to join class remotely via video conferencing or phone
- Provide families with outlines of what will be covered during an absence
If the class is currently reading a novel or other longer-form piece, students should not read ahead unless instructed by the teacher. It is not always possible to predict how fast the rest of the class will complete reading. Upon return, students will be provided with the current progress of the novel and will need to catch up on reading on their own time.
When possible, the teacher and classmates will keep a copy of all work missed for the student to review and complete upon their return. This may not include all work, especially assignments that are not done on paper or digitally or require conversation or group work.
Grades for missed work
Unexcused absences may result in students receiving no credit for missed assessments or assignments. In some cases, students may be given the opportunity to make up the work, but this is not guaranteed and may require the student to spend extra time on their own to complete the work.
For excused absences such as illness and family emergencies, students will be provided with the opportunity to make up assessments or assignments when they are prepared to do so. Alternatively, students may be excused from the assessment or assignment at the discretion of the teacher. If the teacher opts to waive a student from an assessment or assignment missed due to an excused absence, this will not affect the student’s grade positively or negatively.
If a student is absent for any reason, they typically will be given other opportunities to get caught back up:
- Work with another student to get any missed notes
- Be given time to read missed chapters in a novel outside of school or, if possible, during parts of the school day
- Take missed assessment after being able to review missed material or when the students feels they are prepared (in these cases, no late penalties will be assessed)
Math class absences
Please be aware that 4C math does not always work in order or complete all lessons in a module so it is not possible to predict the order of lessons accurately.
Lesson sequences is subject to change based on how students progress through materials, so it is not possible to simply take the current math lesson and work through the same number of lessons as the student will be absent.
Students should not work ahead in math materials beyond what the teacher instructs. In some cases students may not be able to work ahead at all.
Students who are absent should monitor Mr. Cook’s Twitter’s account or check in with other students to see homework posted each day to learn more about how the class is progressing.
Students may attempt to complete homework (pages starting in H) for each lesson they miss on their own if they wish and are able. Students can also complete digital exit tickets as they appear if they feel comfortable doing so. If a student is unable to complete the homework or exit tickets because of missing instruction on the lesson, they should stop working. No student should become pressured or stressed to finish homework or exit tickets for lessons they miss.
Students should not fill in their student journals (pages starting in J) until the return and can work with another student to complete their notes. Please do not attempt to complete journal note pages on your own; some of the notes have specific examples that might be given only in class.
After students return from an absence, lessons cannot be retaught in the original format, but students can make arrangements to work with Mr. Cook to find ways to get caught up.
