Innovative teaching methods show promise in combating student absenteeism

When students don’t come to school, they tend to fall behind; with school starting next week it highlights an ongoing issue for districts across the country and state- chronic absenteeism.

“Chronic absenteeism is a growing crisis and it’s gotten even worse since back to school after COVID-19,” said Jayne Demsky from the School Avoidance Alliance.

Research from the organization provides tips and resources for parents and educators on best attendance practices.

The decade-long organization says students show several side effects students from missing so many days of school.

“It leads usually to depression, the isolation, the stigmatization of it,” added Demsky.

In 2023, the state Department of Education released data on districts’ chronic absenteeismrates from the 2022- 2023 school year.

In that report, 36% of Albany City School District students were chronically absent.

In Schenectady, it was 50%, and in Troy 39%.

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Meanwhile, districts across the state have made different efforts to combat the issue, from involving social workers, and guidance counselors, and connecting with parents.

Another effort showing some success, changing how class is taught.

“I saw a huge change, there was this decline in engagement,” said Katie Trowbridge, a former high school English teacher. “It used to be fun to struggle, to learn, as a team in a classroom to come up with the answer to a challenging question whether it was a math problem, a science problem, or a challenging text we were reading. that used to be engaging and fun and now it just gave me the right answer, I’m just going to Google it.”

Trowbridge, founded Curiosity 2 Create, a non-profit aimed at helping teachers create more engaging lesson plans.

“By doing this it will help with the chronic absenteeism that’s happening and bring back the joy in teaching, the fun in the classroom, and engage students in problem-solving and that productive struggle that needs to be happening in the classroom.”

The seminars Curiosity 2 Create offer change lessons from research papers to video reports and encourage students to pick the topics they want to research for an assignment.

“I started to give a lot of choices, what do you want to read, what do you want to write about? I started to see the curiosity, the engagement, the fun,” Trowbridge added.

Capital Region school districts start heading back to classes starting Tuesday.