Each day at 7:50am, the late bell rings in half empty classrooms as students line up on main street to scan in. Many students arrive as first period is in session, putting themselves at a disadvantage, frustrating teachers, and disrupting lessons.
According to the Maryland State Department of Education, 38.7% of Wilde Lake students are chronically absent, meaning they miss 10% or more of the school year. While this statistic is alarming itself, we often don’t discuss the issue of student tardiness enough, and how this plays into chronic absenteeism.
Many students are missing out on instructional time during first period as they arrive at school anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes late. Some students don’t attend their first period at all. This affects their attendance and their learning.
Ms. Meredith Adams, a teacher at Wilde Lake who teaches AP Calculus BC first period, says lateness is an issue because late students are hurting the teacher’s instructional time.
“Given the amount of late students I have, I wait until a little after 8:00am to begin teaching,” said Ms. Adams. “If you do the 50 minutes of teaching in a week, which is essentially the equivalent
of a class period.” If a student misses the first ten minutes of first period every day of the school year, they are missing the equivalent of 36 days worth of first period, which is 20% of that class in its entirety.
If a teacher doesn’t wait to start their lesson for late students, then those students are missing out on important material almost daily. This can be detrimental to test taking and simply understanding content.
With these issues in mind, I think the biggest problem with student tardiness is accountability. Students are eventually going to leave high school. If they don’t learn punctuality now, they are going to continue to be late to interviews, jobs, and other important events in the future. This tardiness could be detrimental to a student’s success.
I am late to school almost every day, and so is half of my first period. I don’t get to school on time because I feel like there is nothing pushing me to arrive on time. High schools can start incentivizing students to get to school on time so they not only stop missing out on content, but also learn punctuality for their future.
In my first period last year, my teacher assigned small daily quizzes from 7:50-8:00am that could not be made up if a student was late. The quizzes weren’t made to be difficult, but to hold late students who were disrupting learning accountable. While I, along with my classmates, rolled our eyes at this decision, it actually encouraged me to arrive at school on time. My peers and I started arriving on time because we were encouraged to be punctual if we wanted to get a grade we were happy with.
I don’t think every first period teacher needs to start quizzing students at seven in the morning to improve tardiness. However, I think it would be extremely beneficial if first period teachers found a way to encourage their students to be on time just like mine did. Not only did my grade in that class improve, but I actually started learning and understanding content that I would have missed out on if I wasn’t incentivized to arrive on time.
It’s not a teacher’s responsibility to get students to school on time. That’s our responsibility. However, many of us simply need a push to motivate us to get out of bed. If our teachers are willing to do that, our futures will thank you.
