How To Remember Your Daily Attendance

If you are naturally organized and task-oriented, you don't need this message.. This is for the other kind of teacher, the ones for whom tasks sucha s these are not easy, however smart, well-meaning and otherwise conscientious we may be!

As someone who hyperfocuses on teaching and who is also pretty ADD even when I'm not fully immersed, I know how record keeping can easily be forgetten. But I also really respect not making other people's jobs harder. So in honor of Ms. Little's personal plea to us at faculty meeting, here is what I would need to do in order to not forget my daily attendance: 

• Log into my computer and open Powerschool to my attendance every morning during announcements so it's ready. 
• Have a homeroom volunteer to take unoffical attendance. I know they can't take official, but it gives a hurried teacher a place to start . Alternatively to a chart on the wall or clipboard near your passes, you can have each student sign in. They can sign in on a google form you can qr code on the wall or chromebook cart. and they can scan the code with their chromebook when they retrieve it.  Or have a magnet from out to in on the board next to their name)  Both ways help ensure a teacher can take attendance fast if kids are already out of their usual seats working in groups or whatnot. 
• Set an alarm on my phone or the computer I use my projector from. Name it "take attendance now" and set it to go off every weekday at  9:45 am and display that message. Alternately give this reminder job to a student as part of your class jobs. Don't have class jobs yet? Definitely start instituting those as soon as possible. They make the day run smoothly, help build community and a sense of being needed, and help you free up more of your brain brandwidth for the real challenge of teaching.

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