In This Issue:

1. How much are teachers shaped by where they teach?

2. Don’t try to fix neurodivergent teachers; fix the system

3. Integrating music into high-school history classes

4. Using student talk to scaffold student writing

5. Benefits and concerns in an urban debate league

6. Thoughts about teasing

7. What is the impact of inclusion on achievement and attendance?

8. Short item: Getting parents to act on a child’s poor attendance

 

Quotes of the Week

“There’s a gradient. The farther the phone, the more restrictive the policy, the better the outcome.”

            Angela Duckworth commenting on a survey of the impact of cellphone restrictions in 

U.S. public schools, quoted in “The Stricter the Cellphone Policy, the Happier the 

Teacher, Research Finds” by Emily Tate Sullivan in EdSurge, October 9, 2025

 

“When schools intentionally support neurodivergent educators, everyone benefits. Teachers who feel safe to work in ways that fit their brains are better able to model that same acceptance for students. The classroom becomes a place where difference is understood as part of learning, not something to conceal or correct.”

            Emily Kircher-Morris (see item #2)

 

“Autonomy is lovely, but it comes with isolation.”

            Jeremy Murphy (see item #1)

 

“We get used to the chains we wear, and we miss them when removed.”

            John Dewey (quoted in ibid.)

 

“Too often, students believe that success in math is about being ‘naturally good’ at it, which makes mistakes feel like evidence they don’t belong.” 

            Wendy Amato, quoted in “How to Make Every Student Feel Like a ‘Math Person’” by 

Mary Hendrie in Education Week, November 20, 2025

 

“Each year and each student will teach you something new.”

            Ashley Womble in “Early Career Spotlight” in Communiqué, December 2025 

(Vol. 54, #4, p. 40)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. How Much Are Teachers Shaped by Where They Teach?

            “Teachers’ school contexts play critical yet underappreciated roles in their development of instructional practice in individual classrooms,” says Jeremy Murphy (College of the Holy Cross) in this article in Schools. He describes the four very different environments in which he’s taught, how students addressed him in each setting, and the ways his teaching was shaped by the very different pedagogical environments (the names of the first three schools are pseudonyms):

            • Ignatius Prep – Murphy started his teaching career at a privately funded urban Jesuit-founded middle school staffed by recent college graduates who committed to a year or two of service, earned modest stipends, and lived together near the school. In 10-hour days, teachers formed close bonds with students, but the pedagogy was traditional and highly prescriptive, with a code of discipline strictly enforced by demerits, silent lunches, calls home, and meeting with the headmaster.

“Mr. Murphy” is what students called him, and he and his colleagues “occupied a profoundly different world from our students, and one too often uninterrogated,” he says. “Fixated on tucked-in shirts and eye contact – on policing the bodies of young men of color – only widened these divisions.” Desks in his classroom were in straight rows, he prioritized rules, compliance, and silence, and frequently lost his temper. Students took tests every day, and those who did poorly were punished by missing after-school activities. 

In his second year at Ignatius, Murphy began to question the strict ethos he’d adopted. He stopped handing out merits and demerits, abandoned the ability-leveling system, and eased up on reading quizzes. “I increasingly tapped the relationships I had built with students to motivate them and manage classrooms,” he says. “This relational work, nurtured by the school’s focus on community, has remained central to my teaching ever since. And though my practices would never be harmonious at Ignatius, they would at least become less dissonant.” 

• Promise Academy – Murphy’s next venue, an innovative grade 7-12 public school partnered with a local university, had a similar faculty and student body as Ignatius but was much less traditional. Students sat in groups, there was lots of classroom chatter, and teachers were addressed by their last name – after he had proved himself with students, he was “Murphy.” Teachers “often stood on the sidelines,” he says, “quietly keeping a pulse on students’ sensemaking. They answered questions with more questions and intervened sparingly.” Murphy quickly adopted this style of teaching, resisting “my gut instinct to weigh in and evaluate each student’s contribution… I increasingly approached teaching as a process of creating conditions for students to discover things for themselves.” 

Every Wednesday morning, teachers met for two hours to share classroom strategies, confer about students, and shape school policies. Teachers visited each other’s classrooms, discussed what they noticed, and felt constantly driven to improve. “In this environment,” says Murphy, “enacting ambitious pedagogies was not difficult. It was just what you did.” Students there would not have tolerated the “pedagogy of poverty” he’d used at Ignatius. After three years at Promise Academy, he decided to try his acquired teaching skills in a tougher environment. “You sure you’re ready, Murphy?” asked a student. He thought he was.

• Highland High – At a comprehensive high school in Baltimore, students addressed him as “Mister” and he found himself wrestling with chronic absenteeism, tardiness, class cutting (first period was constantly interrupted by a stream of late students), and high teacher turnover (“How long are you gonna be here?” asked a student). Metal detectors greeted students at the front door, and “hall monitors patrolled corridors, two-way radios crackling at their hips.” 

The school’s test scores were rock-bottom, to which the response was focusing on “the basics,” frequent benchmark tests, and PD about “grit” and “growth mindset.” Test scores didn’t budge, and Murphy began to see the school through the kids’ eyes – “a mirror, passively reflecting the marginalization and control students experienced beyond the schoolhouse.” Administrators popped into classrooms to see if the curriculum pacing guide was being followed, state standards were being taught, and objectives were written on the board. He and his colleagues saw these mandates “as an all-out war on teachers’ expertise.”

Murphy tried to teach the way he had at Promise Academy – studying the poetic styles of Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, and Gwendolyn Brooks, writing argumentative essays on injustice, discussing The Color Purple, translating Macbeth into vernacular English – but it was an uphill battle with students. Most were so deeply ensconced in passively filling out worksheets that one pleaded with him, “Can’t we just have packets, Mister?” Murphy increasingly complied, which reduced him, as he put it, “to a foreman on a shop floor, supervising production and workflow from a clinical distance.” He remembered a John Dewey quote: We get used to the chains we wear, and we miss them when removed.

• College of the Holy Cross – In his current position as an education professor at this liberal arts college, Murphy says he enjoys “a spectacular level of autonomy, one inconceivable in my past teaching positions. This freedom has enabled me to experiment with alternatives to traditional grading systems and center relationships and community building in my practice. My administrators respect my expertise and encourage pedagogical innovation.” Students address him as “Professor Murphy,” conveying their respect for his expertise and status. “Fully actualized,” he says, “I have transcended the contextual constraints that once shadowed my practice.” 

But he misses some features of Promise Academy: visiting other classrooms, discussing lessons with colleagues, a common instructional framework, a shared vision of teaching and learning. “Without such practices,” says Murphy, “the work of developing and improving one’s craft becomes a lonely, private affair. Autonomy is lovely, but it comes with isolation.” He realizes how rare and precious the collegial ethos at Promise Academy is. Too often, teachers work as independent artisans, working and learning alone, rarely talking about teaching with other professionals.

At Holy Cross, feedback comes mostly from end-of-course student surveys, and Murphy has been troubled by a common thread in these anonymous questionnaires: he should lecture more; he’s the expert; make classes less like high school. The irony is that Murphy is teaching courses that critically examine traditional K-12 practices, focusing on the difference between “doing school” and actual student learning. Lecturing about these ideas would make no sense, but that’s what some students are urging him to do.

“By emphasizing context’s role in shaping teaching,” Murphy concludes, “I do not mean to suggest that teachers in school contexts ill-structured to support ambitious instruction cannot cultivate rich learning experiences for students. I am also not suggesting that teachers in unsupportive settings can exempt themselves from pursuing ambitious pedagogies because their contexts make it inconvenient. We must not settle for less, even when forces around us make that option seem rational and expedient.

“But I am arguing that when it comes to developing and sharpening one’s craft, the overlapping contexts teachers occupy play outsized but underappreciated roles. It helps when their contexts do not work against each other. It helps when the classrooms student inhabit do not directly undermine each other. And it helps when the distance between a teacher’s and their school’s educational ideals is not perilously wide. Though it is unrealistic to think a teacher’s set of practices could be perfectly harmonious, dissonant symphonies make for bad listening all around.” 

 

“Any Good at Another School? How School Contexts Shaped My Teaching” by Jeremy Murphy in Schools, Fall 2025 (Vol. 22, #2, pp. 347-360); Murphy can be reached at [email protected]. 

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2. Don’t Try to Fix Neurodivergent Teachers; Fix the System

            In this Cult of Pedagogy article, counselor/author Emily Kircher-Morris remembers that as a teacher, she had great difficulty with things that other teachers seemed to take in stride: doing lesson plans, remembering to send kids to their individual support classes, keeping up with her grading. “I was constantly juggling, improvising, and frantically trying to stay above water,” she says. “At the time, I didn’t realized how much my ADHD was affecting me.” 

            As she’s reflected on her own experience and read the research, it’s dawned on Kircher-Morris that being a teacher or school leader is really challenging for people like her. Many educators over 30 grew up at a time when ADHD was associated with hyperactive boys, autism was narrowly defined, and neurodivergent girls and high achievers were often overlooked. Adults in this age bracket are the “lost generation” of neurodivergent adults who have only recently gotten in touch with why they had so much difficulty in school. 

“For many,” says Kircher-Morris, “the moment of recognition arrives with equal parts relief and disorientation.” They understand why some things about being a teacher were so taxing, but they’re still expected to be endlessly adaptable and organized, and the stigma is still there in schools where “having it together” is an expected part of being a professional. “Even today,” she says, “many teachers remain quiet about their neurodivergence, afraid it could be misinterpreted as incompetence.” 

The good news is that “neurodivergent educators are often among the most creative, empathetic, and passionate educators in the building,” says Kircher-Morris. “The very traits that make us different are often what make us effective.” Several traits can strengthen a school community:

• Hyperfocus and monotropism – Neurodivergent people often experience deep, immersive attention to a task for extended periods. “Teachers with these traits,” says Kircher-Morris, “can dive deeply into lesson design, student relationships, or creative projects, producing work that is original, rich, and fully realized.” 

• Pattern recognition and problem-solving – These educators may excel at noticing patterns and inconsistencies in student behavior, curriculum design, or systemic routines – perhaps the underlying reasons for something that isn’t working. “This analytic strength,” says Kircher-Morris, “often makes them exceptional in roles that require careful observation, data interpretation, or process improvement.” 

• Empathy and connection – Neurodivergent teachers, remembering their own experience in school, can understand students’ difficulties and get what it feels like to be misunderstood and out of place. They can build strong, trusting relationships with students who struggle with behavior, attention, and social connection.

• Adaptability, innovation, and love of novelty – Having coped and invented creative workarounds for years, these teachers can be remarkably resourceful solving a familiar problem in a new way. “Their willingness to embrace change and explore new ideas,” says Kircher-Morris, “often brings fresh energy to their classrooms and to the teams they work with.” 

• Detail orientation and accuracy – Some teachers with autism excel at pattern recognition, memory, and attention to detail, which can be helpful in classrooms and with school teams. 

These are strengths that can be tapped, but these traits are often in tension with the daily reality of schools, making the job stressful for neurodivergent educators - specifically:

-   Executive function overload – “What looks like inconsistency from the outside,” says Kircher-Morris, “is often a byproduct of a brain working overtime to juggle competing priorities without enough recovery time in between.”

-   Sensory and environmental stressors – Fire drills, corridor traffic, humming fluorescent lights, the cafeteria – dealing with all this can be exhausting.

-   Social expectations and masking – Staff dynamics, parent demands, and unspoken workplace rules can feel like navigating a second full-time job, and pretending to act normal is taxing. 

-   Perfectionism and burnout – Neurodivergent educators often hold themselves to impossibly high standards from years of feeling they have to prove their competence. 

Each of these is difficult, but together they can be overwhelming. “Without intentional redesign,” says Kircher-Morris, “the system quietly weeds out the very educators whose strengths could transform it.” 

Systemic change needs to happen, but in the meantime, she suggests seven ways neurodivergent educators can protect their energy and make their jobs sustainable:

-   Externalize executive functioning: virtual task boards, digital calendars, reminder apps.

-   Batch and bundle tasks: group similar to-dos and block out time for them.

-   Use body doubling: partner with a colleague to share planning; do virtual co-planning.

-   Build sensory-friendly routines: use noise-reducing earbuds, adjust lighting, and have a “reset ritual” between classes – for example, stretching or sipping water.

-   Map energy and be aware of rhythms: align with times of day when you perform best.

-   Strategically leverage novelty: changes in routine can act as fuel, not distraction. 

-   Reframe and practice self-compassion: create space to experiment without shame.

“Together, these tools aren’t about doing more,” says Kircher-Morris, “they’re about doing differently. The most effective strategies are the ones that reduce friction, preserve energy, and let your strengths take the lead.” 

            What can administrators do? “The goal is not to lower expectations,” she says, “but to create working conditions where every educator can bring their best self to the classroom without burning out in the process.” Some suggestions:

-   Normalize neurodiversity in staff culture and address it sensitively in staff meetings.

-   Provide clear, predictable, non-ambiguous communication. 

-   Streamline bureaucratic tasks and eliminate unnecessary paperwork. 

-   Offer flexibility when possible, including asynchronous PD.

-   Create safe, confidential paths for accommodations. 

-   Foster community and mentorship, because isolation amplifies burnout. 

-   Model compassion and sustainability from the top.

“A culture that values sustainability over perfection,” says Kircher-Morris, “tends to retain its best people, because they’re not burning out trying to meet impossible standards.”

            Her conclusion: “When schools intentionally support neurodivergent educators, everyone benefits. Teachers who feel safe to work in ways that fit their brains are better able to model that same acceptance for students. The classroom becomes a place where difference is understood as part of learning, not something to conceal or correct.Students see adults who use visual schedules, take sensory breaks, or talk openly about their attention patterns, and realize that these strategies aren’t signs of weakness, but tools for success.” 

 

“Supporting Neurodivergent Teachers: How Schools Can Help the Helpers” by Emily Kircher-Morris in Cult of Pedagogy, November 23, 2025

 

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3. Integrating Music Into High-School History Classes

            In this article in Social Education, Philadelphia teacher Dave Marshall describes how he first introduced music in his history classes. As a new teacher, he occasionally played a pertinent song to start a class – for example, Edwin Starr’s “War” before a lesson on Vietnam protests. Then he began building an entire lesson around an in-depth analysis of a song – in one case, Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” 

From there Marshall progressed to having students study several related songs – for example, five songs on climate change, including Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and Childish Gambino’s “Feels Like Summer.” This brought depth and passion to class discussions and students’ presentations and essays. 

Marshall came up with the CALM acronym to help students analyze a song more thoughtfully:

-   Context – What is the relevant historical and musical background?

-   Artist – What aspects of their life and past work inform this song?

-   Lyrics – Which lines seem important and why? Are there any allusions?

-   Music – What are the most notable musical elements, and what do they achieve?

He found that after students watched him model the acronym with one song, they loved deconstructing a song of their choice (see the article sidebar for a CALM analysis of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”). 

            In 2023, Marshall wondered, “What if, instead of enhancing my curriculum with songs, the music drove my curriculum?” While continuing to teach his regular U.S. history course, he launched a senior elective, Music and U.S. History, which he says has been the most rewarding course of his 18-year career. “The elective opened up exciting new opportunities for student choice and voice, especially for student presentations.” Two students taught a joint lesson on Taylor Swift’s impact on feminism and the music industry. The elective now has four thematic units: Race and Racism, Protest and Patriotism, Climate Change, and Gender and Sexuality (here’s the full syllabus and the 84-song Spotify playlist compiled with students’ help). 

            A popular activity in the elective has been having seniors teach a music-themed history lesson to the school’s fourth graders – one group featured John Lennon’s “Imagine” and H.E.R.’s “Change.” Elective students have also crafted their own playlists of 4-5 songs on a topic, writing a paragraph on how each song spoke to the theme and then tying them together in a unifying essay. 

            Through his occasional use of songs in regular history classes and an elective course on music in history, Marshall has found three significant benefits:

            • Engaging reluctant students – “Several students who were apathetic throughout my 11^th-grade U.S. History course dove into our music-based lessons in twelfth grade,” he says. One student got excited about the culture surrounding historical events, while another “learned to be curious about a song and its background, and how that interacts with the time in which it was created, the artist who created it, and the listener.” 

            • Building important historical skills – Without even realizing it, students are doing primary-source analysis when they place a song in historical context and parse its lyrics. One ambitious student wrote her final paper on which had more impact on gun violence – protest songs or political speeches. Marshall cites evidence that infusing music into core academic classes improves long-term retention of course content and develops social-emotional and problem-solving skills. 

            • Making interdisciplinary connections – A full-class discussion of Nina Simone’s three-minute song “Backlash Blues” touched on: (a) the history and structure of the 12-bar blues; (b) the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes; (c) how the Vietnam draft disproportionately affected low-income Americans and people of color; (d) Simone’s biography from a documentary they watched; and (e) the history of segregation and redlining (from the line, “You give me second-class houses/And second-class schools”). 

            Marshall closes with four caveats for teachers who might want to include music in a regular history course or teach an elective:

-   Think carefully about the lyrics and themes of potentially controversial songs and communicate the rationale for using them to students, families, and administrators. 

-   Establish class norms and expectations, ideally brainstormed with students. 

-   Counteract students’ tendency to immediately declare their likes and dislikes by sharing De gustibus non est disputandum (there’s no accounting for taste) and focusing on a CALM analysis instead.

-   Devote plenty of time building the skill of close listening. Like close reading, this takes effort, practice, and modeling.

With these cautions in mind, Marshall strongly encourages the use of songs in history classes. “With intentional structure and practice,” he says, “my students honed their historical skills, learned key content, and had fun in the process.” 

 

“‘Songs Make History’: How Music Boosts History Students’ Skills and Engagement” by Dave Marshall in Social Education, November/December 2025 (Vol. 89, #6, pp. 352-357); Marshall can be reached at [email protected].

 

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4. Using Student Talk to Scaffold Student Writing

            In this article in English Journal, Meghan Dougherty Kuehnle (University of Notre Dame), Amanda White (a high-school ELA teacher in Columbus, Ohio), and George Newell (Ohio State University) describe how White shifted from the formulaic five-paragraph essay and began to use student talk to stimulate and support argumentative writing. Here’s how she orchestrated that in one writing unit:

            • Speed debate – In small groups, students quickly debate and reach consensus on a series of questions:

-   “Bests” – Fruit, type of food, pet, social media platform, actor/actress, musician, season);

-   “This or that” – Country or city? Early or late bedtime? Drive or fly? Time travel to the future or the past? Texting or calling? Online or in-person school?

-   “Would you rather…?” Go viral for something embarrassing or stay unknown for something you’re proud of? Be really rich but hate your job or have an average salary and love your job? Lie to protect someone you love or tell the truth and risk hurting them? 

-   “Big questions” – Should schools eliminate standardized tests? Should the driving age be raised to 18? Is it acceptable to use social media to publicly shame someone for their behavior? Should we eliminate censorship in books, movies, and other media?

• Silent debate – Students pair up on a question (for example, Is it okay for social media platforms to ban people?), sit back-to-back, write claims and counterclaims on a piece of paper and pass it back and forth without speaking. “Silent debate,” say Kuehnle, White, and Newall, “asks students to progress from engaging in argumentative moves through talk to doing so in writing, a barrier that is often difficult for students to cross.” 

• Student-teacher conferences – As students start writing their argumentative essays, White circulates and checks in with students individually, affirming, encouraging, questioning, and making suggestions for revision. 

“By explicitly framing writing as social,” conclude the authors, “teachers can make otherwise daunting genres more accessible and relevant to students, reducing the barrier to engagement and making writing more meaningful to students inside and outside the classroom.” 

 

“From Talk to Text: Leveraging Dialogue to Cultivate Argumentation” by Meghan Dougherty Kuehnle, Amanda White, and George Newell in English Journal, September 2025 (Vol. 115, #1, pp. 62-70); the authors are at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. 

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5. Benefits and Concerns in an Urban Debate League

            In this American Educational Research Journal article, Sebastian Castrechini (Stanford University) reports on his study of students taking part in an afterschool debate club that was part of a 20-school urban/suburban league. The club’s coaches taught the skills of objective argumentation – being able to take either side of an issue regardless of one’s personal beliefs. The coaches also helped students be mutually supportive as they prepared for and participated in debates. “This included being courteous during debates to allow space for opponents’ voices,” says Castrechini, “and sharing knowledge between debates to help everyone, even opponents, become better debaters rather than hoarding information to gain a competitive advantage.” 

            But he also noticed a troubling dynamic. The ethos of objectivity and politeness required students of color to separate their identities, beliefs, and experiences from the arguments they made. When these students occasionally challenged the aggressiveness of white opponents in debates, judges and coaches urged them to do so nicely and stick to the material that was in their preparation packets. In short, says Castrechini, “the value for traditional debate socialized debaters of color to be silent on race and to anticipate bias.”

            One Latina debater said she always looked at the race of the student she was debating, and if they were white, she didn’t draw on her own experiences, which she believed would be brushed off. “They won’t be able to compare their struggles to mine,” she said, “so I don’t use my personal experiences when I’m going against a white competitor, but if I walk into a debate round that has people of color, I tend to use my experiences more.” 

            “My study,” Castrechini concludes, “brings to light small moments in the daily life of an organization that can have large racializing effects, and program leaders and staff should be prepared to intervene in such situations to break the pattern of silence that upholds whiteness. For research, examining connections between diversity and youth development in afterschool spaces is a crucial need.”

 

“Organizational Culture and Ethnic-Racial Socialization in a Racially Diverse Afterschool Urban Debate League” by Sebastian Castrechini in American Educational Research Journal, December 2025 (Vol. 62, #6, pp. 1207-1240); the author is at [email protected]. 

 

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6. Thoughts About Teasing

            In this New York Times article, Jancee Dunn distinguishes between affectionate ribbing that’s light and taken well and teasing that hurts. “The harmful kind of teasing can make you feel shame and anger,” she says, “and can erode your sense of safety and trust.” Dunn asked several psychologists for their ideas on how to know when someone has crossed that line and how to shut them down. Some insights:

            • People who are being teased often don’t find it as funny as the people teasing them, who tend to say they’re just kidding. If your gut tells you it’s hurtful, the other person has gone too far.

            • Ask what’s behind the teasing. In one couple undergoing therapy, the husband kept teasing his wife about being late, which really annoyed her. They needed to have a conversation about this issue, rather than him disguising it as teasing. 

            • If you want to stop someone who’s teasing you, the best approach is being short and direct: “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say things like that” or “Hey, that’s enough” or simply, “Ouch.” 

• If you’re being ribbed in front of other people, it’s best to pull the teaser aside and say something like, “What’s going on here? Because it’s starting to feel like maybe you’re poking me a little. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, because you probably don’t know that it stings.” 

• If you’re a teaser, tune in to the other person’s reactions. If they’re stone-faced and silent, be quick to apologize, or say something like, “I thought we were in a place where a little lighthearted banter would be welcome, but I’m getting the sense it really wasn’t. I’m sorry.” 

• How do you know if teasing is okay? If it’s kind. If it shows that they really see you and know you, which creates and sustains intimacy. In-jokes can create a warm glow between people who know and trust each other. In these circumstances, teasing is just fine.

 

“What To Do When a Joke Hurts Your Feelings” by Jancee Dunn in The New York Times, January 10, 2025

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7. What Is the Impact of Inclusion on Achievement and Attendance?

            In this article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Katharine Farham Malhotra (Teachers College, Columbia University) reports on her study of the impact of including students with disabilities in mainstream classes. She focused on a diverse, rural district in the northeastern U.S. with 17 percent of students in special education. The district succeeded in moving 90 percent of students with IEPs into general education classes for the majority of the school day.

Key findings: elementary and middle school students’ test scores and attendance were unaffected by the implementation of inclusion, and at the high-school level, ninth-grade promotion rates increased by nine percentage points and graduation rates increased by two percentage points in the years following implementation. “Findings,” concludes Malhotra, “suggest that inclusive education does not come at the expense of students’ academic progress in the short term and may improve academic outcomes in the longer term.” 

 

“Whose IDEA Is This? An Examination of the Effectiveness of Inclusive Education” by Katharine Farham Malhotra in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2025 (Vol. 47, 4, pp. 1045-1070); Malhotra can be reached at [email protected]. 

 

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8. Short Item:

Getting Parents to Act on a Child’s Poor Attendance – In this Education Week article, Cailynn Peetz Stephens reports the key findings of an analysis by School Status on how schools can connect with parents on problematic student attendance: 

-   Notify parents about a troubling pattern early in the school year.

-   Send notifications on weekdays at around 8:00 a.m. or between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m.

-   Be specific – for example, saying that the child has been absent four days this month.

-   Convey empathy – e.g., “Reply if you need support with transportation or health concerns.” 

 

“The Surprising Factor That Makes Absenteeism Interventions More Successful” by Cailynn Peetz Stephens in Education Week, November 12, 2025

 

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