I ask my kids to think for themselves and not follow the crowd. My college freshman texted me (don’t know why) that she was about to walk out of class in the college’s massive student protest against Trump’s election. I asked her what she wanted to accomplish and was she thinking for herself or following the crowd. If all seniors decide to jump off a cliff, or if all sophomores decide to skip classes and smoke pot, or if all students go into a party in a building that looks sketchy and unsafe, do you follow?
Favorite Senior Skip Day Story: My kids attend a school where SSD is not even frowned on by admins. They don’t send out any 'Don’t do it " messages They just assume every Senior will do it. So, the Friday day before the SsD Monday the AP English TeAcher says " see you all Tuesday". One girl, new to the school and the area with very strict parents says I’ll be here Monday. The teacher was like " Huh? I don’t even know what you’d do, I like all my fellow teachers of seniors will be using that time to grade papers. Should I call your parents and explain how this works?"
He did and parents relented. Lol!
We did senior skip day 40 years ago. Pretty sure it’s still going strong.
My daughter’s HS schedules senior prom on a Thursday and Friday is skip day (and go to the shore for the weekend). My daughter went to school on skip day - as did a friend who had perfect attendance he didn’t want to mess up. The teacher’s know and do’t have any lessons planned for that day. BTW the kid with perfect attendance (since Kindergarten) was not recognized for it at senior award night (I think he was disappointed).
“BTW the kid with perfect attendance (since Kindergarten) was not recognized for it at senior award night (I think he was disappointed).”
Our school district banned any recognition of good/perfect attendance. Public health reasons.
I mean it’s kind of stupid to praise someone for either 1) being very lucky they never got sick on a school day or 2) coming to school when ill exposing others to your nasty bug.
We had at least five my senior year because my class couldn’t get our act together and decide on one.
It didn’t end up being a big deal because of how many people regularly skipped anyway.
Two senior skip days at my children’s high school. One during each semester. I let my son decide for himself, I think he skipped during the second semester.
When I was in high school, once I turned 18, my parents signed a waiver allowing me to write my own excuse notes. I was able to come and go as I pleased and I took full advantage of it :))
I skipped plenty of school prior to senior skip day. When I turned 18 I called in my own absences, no parent waiver was required.
I went to school on skip day. Way more fun than following the crowd. One of my teachers said to the five of us in class, “Every year the teachers try to guess who will show and who will blow. I lost.”
Alcohol was legal at 18. I still made the kegger in plenty of time.
No skip, no balls.
There probably was one but the student culture at my public magnet was such that very few kids I knew of participated beyond those who were inclined to cut regularly. Like our class’ junior prom, it was given so little priority, I’m not sure those who were interested cared enough to even bother organizing an official skip day.
Also, by senior year of HS, I was really “been there, done that” as I did my “senior skip day*” with 2 buddies in the last month of 8th grade. There was really no point in going to classes beyond state education mandates as we were practically done with lessons and in some cases…final exams. We 3 12-14 year old junior high kids spent the entire skip days wandering around Manhattan from Central Park down to Grand Central…and annoying random adults from sunbathers in Central Park to midtown executives in their formal businesswear. .
Still surprised we weren’t picked up by truant officers despite the fact we were clearly not adults, weren’t making any effort to blend in with the “adults”, and several NYPD cars rolled by.
*Really multiple random days.
“Still surprised we weren’t picked up by truant officers despite the fact we were clearly not adults, weren’t making any effort to blend in with the “adults”, and several NYPD cars rolled by.”
Lol. I guess those were in the days when you wouldn’t have had so many random days off that would differ in every public/ private school in different districts in the 3 states where student could conceivably be from when taking a day off in NYC. The number of “conference days” and " teacher work days" my kids had was astounding.
My kid and a couple of other senior baseball players were the only ones attending school on sr skip day. Coach would have benched them for a week!
Not sure about that part, but the way lessons/exams were structured at my Junior High, they could have let us graduate in early-mid May and it wouldn’t have affected the coverage of educational content as we covered everything by early-mid-May and in some cases…finished all our finals by then. Attending class after that point was mainly an exercise in being a seat warmer with teachers doing varying things to “look busy”.
And this was and is still considered one of the academically better public junior high schools in the NYC area…and one which sends many kids to the exceedingly selective NYC Specialized High Schools.
My point was that school districts now have so many random days off, which differ from district to district, that no truant officer in NYC could possibly know if a kid hanging out in the city was cutting class.