Today at a pedagogy development meeting I got to trot out my favorite teaching position:

Stop having attendance policies.

(Short thread.)

Attendance Policies serve NO purpose aside from making sure folks are okay/safe/not falling away.

You're there to grade learning/mastery.

If a student can ace assignments without attending lectures, why shouldn't they ace the course?

When students miss class, it is not about YOU or about their CLASSROOM or their CLASSROOM COMMUNITY. They aren't out here tryna hurt your feelings.

It is about their choices, needs, priorities, and lives. Especially in a pandemic.

Why not find other ways to track engagement?

Note: The most boring and tired reply to this is "But we need a classroom community!" Nope. You need to design teaching methodologies that don't require students to teach one another/be the class for you. You can create experiences that won't sink when some folks are missing.

Note 2: I am a WRITING CENTER PERSON so nobody loves collaboration or peer-based, power-diffuse settings more than me. Still, I'm the one getting paid to teach the class. Not the students. I can't/won't rely on them to make my class successful or informative.

Note 3: OBVIOUSLY we need to check in on students who seem unavailable or as though they're struggling. And yes, attendance / noticing who's doing the work helps us track that.

Note 4: Meanwhile, again, forever, I just don't think that showing up to class indicates whether or not a student is learning/mastering content. It's completely separate. Being in the room and doing the work are not the same thing. And they shouldn't be.

Why? Because disabled students, students who are parents, students who have their own lives & crises & priorities don't owe your ego the benefit of throwing themselves into chaos to suit your fantasy of a classroom environment.

If someone aces your assignments, give them the A.