As a member of the Wildcat band and the newspaper staff, I have obligations that sometimes take me out of my classes.  These obligations that require me to miss class are school-approved and excused.

Any student involved in organizations in school can relate with me – some teachers get extremely angry when we miss their class.  It’s not enough that we’re given 3-5 hours of homework every night and we’re expected to study every night just in case they feel like dropping a quiz on us, but they also expect us never to miss their classes.

I feel like most of these teachers take school so seriously that it becomes ridiculous.  Not to say school is not important – it is.  But when you are a well-balanced student who is involved in multiple organizations, sometimes you are going to miss class.  Teachers need to realize this fact and not raise all heck when it happens.

One of the organizations that seems to catch me the most flack from teachers about missing classes is band.  When there’s a pep rally, band will miss 3rd hour to have practice and set up for the start of the pep rally.  Enough teachers started complaining about this that action was taken in attempt to fix it.  The first change that was made – that band had to go to third hour for 15 minutes and then leave to go to the band room – did not work out.  The teachers kept the students in class until the start of activity period.  This left those students lost as they could be, and further proved the point that teachers get way too riled up about something that is not even a big deal.

Now we have some strange mixed up schedule on pep rally days that I’m not even going to attempt to understand.

My point in all of these long examples is that school is more than just showing up for classes, taking a test, getting a grade, and moving on.  Schools offer clubs and organizations for the students to participate in, and sometimes these are going to take away from a little bit of class time.  Usually with such organizations, certain GPAs are required in order for the student to continue to participate.  This is to help students feel motivated to keep track of what they miss in the classes when they are not present.

School is more than just school.  School is more than just taking notes and tests and getting a letter that tells you where you rank.  School asks more of students than just that.  It asks for students to be involved, to broaden their horizons.  When those things they are involved in call them away from schools, teachers should be more understanding.  At least when they miss, it’s for a school function, and the students aren’t sitting at home on the couch gaining weight by eating copious amounts of potato chips.

I would prefer a missed class to that scenario.