Tardies: Not a Small Matter

Punctuality is a telling sign of one's work ethic and overall personality. Learning to be on time to job interviews, job assignments, and other important matters in life begins as early as the elementary years. Being on time to school and class must be encouraged, expected, and enforced. Students are not the only ones who are responsible for this life lesson. Parents, teachers, and administrators all have roles when it comes to timeliness. 

Parents

It is your responsibility to make sure your children arrive to school on time. This responsibility does not end, even once your students are old enough and able to drive themselves. 

• Join your children on their way to school, whether it is you physically driving them, taking the bus, riding bikes, or walking with them.

• Create systems within the household in the morning for a smooth transition out the door, such as the same wake up time each school day, followed by immediately getting dressed, eating breakfast, then brushing teeth. 

• Enforce an appropriate bedtime and pack lunches the night before to ensure adequate rest and an easier morning.

• Have a consistent departure time each day that includes a buffer to allow for traffic, forgotten lunches, etc.

• Make sure you (the parent) are ready to walk out the door at a set time and that your child is not late because you haven't finished getting ready for your day.

• Lead by example! If you set up a good routine and are consistent with it, your child will find it easy to continue to be punctual even into his driving years.

• Consider removing the privilege of self-transportation, and drop your student off at school if he/she cannot seem to make it to school on time. While this may seem like an embarrassment to your teen—and an inconvenience for you—the habits you are helping enforce will have lasting positive consequences.

Teachers

If your campus has a site-wide tardy policy, awesome—enforce it! Nothing is worse for pupils than the mixed messages they receive when the school has one set of rules, but individual teachers have different ones. If such rules do not exist at your school, create a reasonable one within your class. Have the expectation that your learners are to be on time. There are multiple ways to express the importance of this:

• Be on time yourself. This means no last minute trips to the copy room or to refill your coffee—plan ahead!

• Teach bell to bell. Have a "starter" or warm-up question on the board ready to go as your pupils walk into class. Greet the class immediately when the bell rings. Engage your learners from the get-go. 

• Award points for the work done in the first few minutes of class. This will reward those who are on time, and hopefully motivate those who aren't timely to change their habits. 

• Notify parents! If you see a pattern of lateness, confront the child but also alert his/her parents. The more people who are aware of the situation and are encouraging change, the more likely it is that change will happen. 

Administrators

You are the backbone and need to bring the teeth to the rules. Meaning, you need to support the teachers and enforce the policies that the school sets. Other ways to encourage punctuality include:

• Walk the halls before school and in-between classes. Talk with students and encourage them to make their way to their classes as the start time nears. 

• Enforce the enforcement. That is, make sure your teachers are noting tardies and following the site-wide policy.

• Create a system so that the burden of tardies does not fall entirely on individual teachers. Possibly create a detention hall run by various staff members so that teachers are not giving up their lunch break to supervise tardy pupils. 

• Notify parents! Again, you must approach tardiness (especially habitual tardiness) as a team, getting all parties involved. For all you know, it could be the parent making the child late to school. Get the whole story and stress the importance of punctuality to the adults in the situation. 

Students

At the end of the day (or in this case, the beginning), it is ultimately the student's  job to be on time. Each individual needs to take responsibility for his own success, and that starts with being in one's seat before class begins. Your students will find it incredibly hard to keep a job later in life if they have not learned punctuality. While a teacher cannot "fire" someone for being late, learners better believe that their boss can and will terminate them for tardiness. Help your students to set up good habits now that will extend to making their lives easier later. 

Do you have a unique/clever way to handle tardiness in your classroom? Share your ideas with the Lesson Planet Community.