By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Attendance is important to student success. That’s the message the Carter County Board of Education heard when they met for their regularly scheduled meeting on October 21. The meeting was held at Heritage Elementary School in Hitchins, where fourth grade teacher Cailyn Albright addressed the board on the subject of attendance. Albright discussed both the challenges and methods to improve such.
“Our main goal for attendance has always been not to punish students for not coming to school,” Albright told the board. “Especially in elementary school, it’s not always the student’s fault and we realize that. But we also realize that it is important to give incentives to students to come to school and to reward those who do. Because school is supposed to be fun.”
Albright told the board that Heritage was extremely proud of the fact that last month their attendance had raised to 95.57 percent average attendance.
“We actually led the district last month in attendance,” Albright told the Board. “And we also had 148 kids that had perfect attendance.”
Albright said those students were entered into a drawing to receive gift cards from Poppa John’s Pizza.
She said that in order to reach the 95.57 attendance rate there were school wide incentives. One such incentive was a friendly competition with Prichard Elementary for best attendance, with the principal of the losing school agreeing to serve lunch at the other school. Albright said Heritage won the competition, and the principal of Prichard graciously ‘paid off’ the friendly wager. Also included in the incentives was a competition between the grades at Heritage, with the winner earning extra recess.
Fourth grade teacher Holly Jones also addressed the board and gave further information on what the school was doing to engage their students and improve attendance.
“Some of the things we did during the month of September to encourage attendance were Hat Day, Pajama Day, and other fun days,” Jones said.
“As a classroom,” Jones continued, “every day there is perfect attendance we earn stickers. All those charts are hanging in the cafeteria, so every day they can check them and see how close they are to earning rewards. And we give rewards for every fifteen days there is perfect attendance.”
Both Albright and Jones emphasized the importance of attendance and engagement, and that every single day a student is in class is another opportunity for that student to learn. Engagement is also a crucial component of a child’s education because the more engaged a child is, the more they are able to learn.
As part of that engagement, Heritage encourages the students themselves to share what they believe motivates them. Jones shared a video with the board of various students telling what motivated them. Among the reasons shared were personal satisfaction, extra recess and other prizes, and lunch.
Another motivation for the students, from the students themselves, was family nights at the school. Three Heritage students, John Flaugher, Abel Simmons, and Sophia Villasenor, addressed the board themselves during the meeting and spoke about playing games, crafts, and other benefits of the family nights.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
