You wake up in the morning with a fever and spend the day in bed feeling awful, barely able to move a muscle. Going to school the next day is a given, or else all of your grades will drop. You get there, and all of your teachers want you to have made up everything either that day or the next, and more than one teacher wants you to come in for lunch to work on missing assignments. We have all been here, and students throughout the school do not believe this is fair.
While there are county rules saying for each day missed, students get that number of days to make up their work, most teachers in the school go by their own rules. Depending on the teacher, they may be understanding and give you extra time, others will make you take the quiz scheduled for that day, even when the review was the day before while you were home sick.
Senior Sean Lin has had a few absences throughout high school, and has seen how different teachers deal with them. “I don’t think it’s fair that some teachers want work you missed the next day because when you are sick it is hard to do work and teachers shouldn’t expect that,” Lin said.
Since teachers tend to stick to their own ways, there are things you can do to help yourself. Once you’ve gotten to know the way your teachers handle make up work, planning and organizing can be most helpful. Junior Sierra Coflin has found some ways that help her when she misses school. “If I’m sick, I try my best to get information about the work that I missed so I can do it while I am home,” Coflin said.
Another struggle students face is when you are back at school, teachers automatically assume you can come in for lunch the next day, or even that day. What they seem to forget is there are seven classes in each student’s schedule, and it is impossible to go in for every class in just 45 short minutes. Coflin tries to work it out so that she can make up her work as efficiently as possible. “I schedule going in for classes either before school, after school, as well as lunch,” Coflin said.
Most students choose lunch as their time to make up work so that they do not have to come in early or stay late. One negative about making up work at lunch is that it does not allow much time for eating. Junior Kyra Goldstein constantly faces this issue and tries to accommodate it to work better. “I tend to eat my lunch before I go in to a class during lunch because even when I don’t plan to stay the entire period, things change,” Goldstein said.
Hannah Shapiro
Features Editor
