The Unteachables Podcast

#94: What to do when students are barely showing up to class? Breaking the cycle of non-attendance with compassion, not consequences.

• Claire English • Season 5 • Episode 94

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Are your students arriving late or missing class altogether?

In this episode, we’ll explore why punitive measures often backfire and how they can alienate the very students who need connection the most.

IN THIS EPISODE, I DISCUSS:

  • The pitfalls of punishment: While it may seem like a way to enforce attendance, punishment can foster resentment and disconnect, driving students further away from the classroom.
  • Understanding the reasons behind absenteeism: Many factors influencing attendance are beyond the students’ control, including personal circumstances and mental health challenges.
  • The importance of compassionate expectations: It’s crucial to maintain high standards while approaching students with empathy and understanding.
  • 5 Practical strategies for improving attendance with understanding, compassion and reflection.

The key takeaway from this episode is clear: we cannot lecture or punish our way to better attendance. Instead, we must focus on connection, celebrating progress, and having difficult yet supportive conversations.



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Speaker 1:

Oh, hi teachers, Welcome to Unteachable's podcast Congratulations. You have just stumbled across the best free professional development and support you could ask for. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher, author, teacher mentor and generally just a big behavior nerd, and I created the Unteachable's podcast to demystify and simplify classroom management. I want this podcast to be the tangible support, community validation, mentorship all those pretty important things that we need as teachers to be able to walk into our classrooms feeling empowered and, dare I say it, happy and thrive, especially in the face of these really tough behaviors. So ready for some no-nonsense, judgment-free and realistic classroom management support. I've got your teacher friend. Let's do this. Hello, hello, hello, wonderful teachers. Welcome back to another episode of the Unteachables podcast. It is wonderful to have you join me here. You have got plenty of choice in the podcasting world, but here you are listening to me, so that's wonderful. I hope it's for a very good reason and I hope that you have been getting plenty of value from these episodes.

Speaker 1:

I did a post on Instagram this morning actually, and it was kind of just reintroducing myself and it made me think about the journey that led me here and why I'm so passionate about this work, and it was one of those like hi, I'm Claire, a bit lame, a dorky reel, but it was like a very quick overview of my journey into teaching and the work that I do to introduce that to people who might not know a lot about me. And the first thing was at 17,. You wouldn't catch me dead walking into school again. I wouldn't be walking through any school gates, I was done. I didn't want to talk to any teachers, I didn't want to be around schools. I hated it.

Speaker 1:

But then I very soon realized that my calling was to be the teacher that I desperately needed. So at 21, I graduated my master's without a stable place to live. I was floating around on couches, I was working two jobs just to try to keep myself afloat, literally just scraping by physically, mentally, all of that. So I had a very strong why. I was very resilient, I was very determined. I'm a very stubborn person. So I got through that and I walked into my very first classroom at 21 with zero clue how to manage behavior and I immediately started to drown. So, even with my really strong why, I just had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know if I made the right choice, but because I'm stubborn. I made it my mission to be the best teacher that I was doing. I didn't know if I made the right choice, but because I'm stubborn, I made it my mission to be the best teacher that I possibly could.

Speaker 1:

And even in my second year of teaching, having zero skills, I said to myself one day I am going to teach other teachers, I'm going to support other teachers, I'm going to like dedicate myself to making sure that I nail this in some way. Like I need to get on top of this and I need to be somebody to support other teachers. Because this is a joke, like I just thought this is ridiculous and if teacher training is not going to teach me this stuff, then I need to be somebody to support other teachers with it. So, like, from a very, very, very early stage in my career, I knew that my goal was to support other teachers. So here I am, 14, 15 years later, and I actually feel like I am living my dream job supporting teachers all around the world with their classroom management. Supporting teachers like you to manage your classrooms confidently and compassionately and calmly and, most importantly for me, classroom manage in a way that, like it, honors the student that I was and the teacher that I wanted to be, and to be able to be that teacher in the classroom for students but then impact the lives of students and the teachers globally. It just I'm honestly living my dream doing this work. So all of that to say you're listening to this podcast and you could be listening to a bunch of other podcasts, but the fact that you're listening to this one and you're with me, I am so grateful that I get to support you in whatever way that I possibly can, and I truly hope that, listening to these podcast episodes, you do get some actionable strategies to take away that we don't get taught at university in our teacher training. So, okay, that was a very long introduction just to say hello, thank you for being here. Let's get started then.

Speaker 1:

In today's episode, I wanted to talk about attendance and trying to get attendance from our students and getting students walking through that door either on time or at all. Maybe your students just aren't coming in and maybe they're around the school somewhere but they're choosing not to come to your subject, and, in particular, I wanted to talk about the use of punishments to try to get students to attend class, like whether it's if you don't come to class and you get a detention or you know like there are punishments that are imposed on students who don't come to class or come late to class, and all the rest of it. You have got the best of intentions right. You want the best for your students. If you're listening to this podcast, clearly you want the best for your students, but think about what the goal is to get students through that door. So I want to talk about why punishments are not the best way to do that and, of course, give you some strategies in this episode to help you to encourage students to come to lesson, to increase their attendance, and do so without making things worse, which is what punishments do.

Speaker 1:

And why do they make things worse? Well, when we punish students for things like this especially, we are associating our lessons further with dread. We are fostering resentment. We are disconnecting with the very students who probably need that connection more than any of our students who are showing up to class on time and all the time. And all of this can just further breed that disengagement. It leads to a cycle of avoidance that's so much harder to get them back into class in general.

Speaker 1:

In a recent episode, I spoke about students coming late to class and I spoke about how the reasons they're late to class sometimes are totally out of their control, and the same applies to students not coming to class at all. I slightly touched on this at the start of the episode where I mentioned that when I finished school I never wanted to walk back through the gates of another school again, but when I was in high school I was not getting any attendance awards. My attendance actually went down to 55% in my final year of schooling. That means every single week I was having an average of 2.5 days off school. Half of the time I wasn't there, and that is. You're a teacher. You know that amount of time off school is huge. You are missing so much, and how can you possibly be successful with that amount of time off school?

Speaker 1:

What my teachers didn't know was that at home I was either caring for my mom, who had significant mental health needs at the time, or I was riddled with so much anxiety and depression because of all of those things that were going on that I was feeling completely and utterly hopeless and I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed in the morning. I didn't know how to live Like. I really didn't know what to do. I didn't feel like there was a future for me. It was beyond challenging, and this is not a poor me moment. This is just an opportunity for me to remind everybody out there listening that we have no real understanding around what might be happening for the young people in our care at home.

Speaker 1:

I knew my attendance sucked. I knew that things weren't good at school. And things were worse because I had this stack of catch-up work that kept building and building and building. It was crushed in the bottom of my bag. I was being told off every single day and punished every single day for it not being submitted, and it was like an impossible task for me to catch up on. Even if I had any motivation to continue on with school, with anything, it would have been an impossible task. I was given another set of work to add to it. I was viewed as being lazy. I was viewed as a disengaged teen who didn't deserve to graduate, who didn't deserve success. I remember you know people like other students in my grade oh, don't worry, she's not going to graduate anyway, she's just. You know, she might be at home right now but she's not going to get anywhere in life Like that kind of vibe towards me. I couldn't catch up. I was able to take accountability. I could even accept if I didn't graduate, I knew I hadn't been there enough.

Speaker 1:

This, right here, is not about having zero expectations of our students. It's about holding those expectations with compassion and holding those expectations with understanding and approaching things in the right way, approaching things in a way where students like me all have far harder times than I did will actually start to re-engage with school and to actually want to come in and actually feel connected and feel like there is hope. So that's like the extreme end of things, but kids every day are struggling to get back to class, for whatever reason. It could even just be that they miss out on, like the lesson the last week and they're struggling to get back into it, or it could be any reason that they're not coming. It could. It also could be that it won't do, but there are a bunch of reasons.

Speaker 1:

The whole point is we just don't know. But the way that we approach it matters and this is how we do it. We can't consequence our way to better attendance. It's not going to work. They're not going to come back to class. They're going to disconnect. They're going to, you know, disengage even further. But what we can do is and we can't control those things, by the way, remember like this whole month I've just been banging on about controlling what we can control in the classroom to actually feel confident and calm and being able to approach things with compassion. All the rest of it we can't consequence our way to better attendance, we don't have control over that stuff.

Speaker 1:

But we can find students and give them time to talk to them. And it seems so simple, but nobody did this with me, not once. Just a wellbeing check-in, are you all right? You haven't been coming and I have noticed just get curious and seeing what might come up for that student and a simple conversation can be powerful enough to open doors and give you insight into what might be keeping that student away. And if not, even just the fact that you have gone and seeked that student out and tried to connect might go a long way in and of itself to get that student re-engaged with your lesson. And of course, I am speaking about this particular situation in terms of like students are actually at school going to other subjects but they're not coming to yours. So that's a situation where this is going to work. You obviously can't find them and talk to them if they're not at school at all, but these situations are when they're at school but they're not actually coming to your class.

Speaker 1:

The second thing is recognizing small wins when they do come in. If you have got a student who is a chronic non-attender and they're making the effort to attend your class for that day, no matter how short their stay, no matter whether it's one day every two weeks, it is so important to make them feel like they belong there. There's, you know I talk about like needs meeting behaviors. Love and belonging is such a huge driver for the behaviors that we do see in our young people. That's such a priority for them at that age. If you can try to meet that need for love and belonging.

Speaker 1:

The second they walk into class no matter whether or not they've been there for the last two weeks or you know, they kind of come in drips and drabs that's always going to be more beneficial than the alternative. If they come back to class, and if they come in and the second they walk in they know they're going to be questioned or lectured or they're going to be looked at in a certain way because they haven't been there or haven't done the work. No matter what the reason, they are not going to want to come back. And if they are there, if they do come back, their behaviors are probably going to be incredibly disengaged and they're probably going to be disruptive and they're going to be dysregulated. So it's not going to help anybody to lecture a student, especially in public. It's more important for us to be recognizing the fact that they have come in and try to welcome them in and try to make them feel like they're a part of that class community, no matter what.

Speaker 1:

The third thing is getting curious about how they are experiencing your lesson Once they're back in class. Fabulous, take the time to check in with them about their experience during the lesson. What do you enjoy? What do you find difficult and challenging? How does the environment feel? Where are you sitting in class at the moment? Are you okay with that? Like, do you have any kind of issues with your peers? Like, what is your experience in this room when you're sitting there and doing the work? How does that feel?

Speaker 1:

A lot of students who have been my chronic non-attenders in English are actually at school but don't come to my lesson and they're the ones that really struggle with their literacy or have had really difficult experiences in the past with that subject, have experienced a lot of failure in the past. Chatting to them about that and showing them that you are pitching the work right and understand their challenges, it's always been really helpful to get them to come back in and try, and even if they don't do that immediately, at least it's planting the seeds of you know like I'm really trying here to get you to a place where you're coming in and attempting the work and overcoming those barriers and opening up the door, for that is just so wonderful, and the best way to do that is just to get really curious how are they experiencing the lesson? And ask these questions without any judgment and do it privately as well. So maybe once they're back in class, just like catch them at the end and go oh my gosh, like it's so nice to see you here. Can I just have a bit of a chat about some of the reasons why you might not be coming and how we can make the lesson something that you do want to be involved in? Um, so that's always going to get more buy-in than you lecturing them. You know that you have to come to class. You've missed out on so much work and there is a time and place for that kind of stuff, but it's not right now.

Speaker 1:

The next thing is keep investing in that rapport For those students who are struggling to get through the door. Make investing in their emotional piggy bank an absolute priority. I use the two by 10 method. It's just two minutes for 10 days. I seek that student out and I have a two minute chat about anything not related to behavior. I try to make it as natural as possible, like I'm not, like you know, creeping and seeking them out. Um, but yeah, I. I find that the most effective way to start to break down those barriers with students who I never see in class. If they're never there, you can never get to build that rapport unless you kind of seek them out. And of course, you can't do this with five students because you know five times two minutes a day finding them going to seek them out and it is a lot of time to take out of our day. So I just focus on one student at a time and make them my priority for two weeks and I find it works absolute magic for us being able to, you know, overcome some of those barriers of trust and and start to build the rapport enough for them to be like hey, miss, you know like, and want to come into the lesson.

Speaker 1:

Then the next step and I have very intentionally put this after investing in the rapport and, you know, investing in the emotional piggy bank, because if you don't have that investment first, you have nothing to withdraw. And the next step is to reinforce the expectations with love and kindness. And you can't reinforce those expectations and have serious conversations with a student and make that withdrawal if you haven't got anything to withdraw, because these conversations are hard and it is a withdrawal and without anything in the bank first, you just won't be able to get through to them. You're not going to be able to have these chats with them. And if you do have these chats, you're not going to be able to have any kind of impact with them.

Speaker 1:

So, assuming that you have something in the bank to have any kind of impact with them, so assuming that you have something in the bank, if the attendance issue is something in their control, you can ask them questions like what's the impact of your attendance? Where is this road going? Like, if you're on this path, if you're not coming to class, where is this going to end up? What are your biggest concerns right now? What can we do to fix this? What can I do to help, like have that hard conversation around if you keep going down this track and I care too much about you to let you go down this track any longer. Ask them Like we talk a lot about on this podcast, like control, like what we can control and what we can't control.

Speaker 1:

Ask that student you know you've got all of these barriers here, but what can you control about your attendance? Like, what can you control about your education? Let's focus on those things. And what can I do to help you really take control of those things? Like how can I help you do that? So it's really important to, number one, get them to take accountability for the fact that they're making a choice to have poor attendance in whatever way, shape or form that comes in. But the most important thing is for us to be able to overcome the barriers, like understand the barriers and overcome the barriers with a plan. So really think what is the next step here? So you can ask them, like what's the plan for next lesson? Like what's the plan for next week? What's the plan for the next term? Like what do we want to aim for? And make a realistic plan with them around how to improve their attendance. It's not going to be realistic to go from 50% attendance to 100%, but what can we do together?

Speaker 1:

Also, I think I just need to add on here that if students aren't coming to school, it's not your job to get them to come to school. Necessarily, there are people within your school hopefully, surely that work with the parents and the carers and social services and all of those places to encourage students back into school. If they are chronic non-attenders, well, I know for sure in the UK and Australia they definitely do that. Your job is to try to build that relationship, get them into class, engage them in the best way that you can. If you have concerns about a student that is definitely not attending your class you don't know where they are. If there are any concerns like that, please, please, please, go and speak to your welfare team, your welfare department. That might be called something different in your school, but I just want to make sure that that's said before I finish this episode, because I don't want you to think that it is in your realm of control or expertise to get students that are complete non-attenders back into the school building. How you respond to students when they get there, that is in your control. So let's focus on those things.

Speaker 1:

So the biggest thing to take away from this episode is just remembering that when it comes to student attendance, when they're not coming to class and they finally come to class we can't lecture or punish our way to having better student attendance. It's going to make things worse. We need to connect, we need to celebrate the wins, we need to get curious, we need to offer support, we need to invest in that emotional piggy bank and have the tough and honest conversations when and if we are in the position to do so with impact. So just have a think about the students this week who aren't walking through your door. What is one tiny step you can take to re-engaging them? Focus on what you can control. Focus on the things that are going to move the needle.

Speaker 1:

Our last little takeaway that I absolutely love is that connection is never the wrong answer. If you are ever in doubt about a student, about their behavior, about what's going on student, about their behavior, about what's going on, always lead with connection, because that is always going to do so much more for the relationship, for that behavior, for that student, than any amount of consequences, threats, lectures, punishments ever could. Okay, wonderful teacher, I'll leave it there for now. Have a brilliant week ahead and I will see you in the same place, at the same time next week.

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Claire English

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