Questions

In my career as a teacher I started out being what I now consider to be a complete unreasonable prick. I would assign work over the vacation as well as frown upon parent/student chosen off days. I wouldn't even give any consideration to cuts of class when the student was having personal problems (think like crying in the bathroom, family crisis, had to work, didn't have child care - yes, I've had teen parents as students, etc). I still shudder when I think that I was that awful person.

Like everything else in life I lived and I learned. I now ENCOURAGE IF NOT DEMAND students to take a day off and I tell their parents explicitly "If adults can give themselves a day off why can't kids if they're not up to it?". I realized that there is nothing going on in my classroom that is more important than the lives that they live. The entire concept of giving school work over a break is so ludicrous to me now! It's called a "break" for a fucking reason (plus HW of ANY kind has ZERO discernable statistical difference in grades, retention, class satisfaction, etc).