This is Jennifer Gonzalez, welcoming you to episode 245 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast. In this episode,

we're going to learn about a system that will help you do a better job of meeting absent students' needs.

One of the things they don't teach you in teacher preparation programs is how to deal with the problem of student absences.

I'm not talking about major truancy issues or anything like that.

Just your regular one or two kids out one day, another out on a different day, one student checking out early for an appointment, three gone on another day for a field

trip, that kind of thing, the normal, continual state of flux of school attendance. It's normal,

it's expected, and it creates so many problems, mostly around how to keep all of your

students on track with the learning that's happening in your classroom.

You can create the most spectacular, engaging lesson plans, but if all your students

aren't in the room when those plans are executed, catching them up can be kind of a nightmare.

And despite the fact that this has been a problem for as long as school has existed, few teachers have ever figured out a full

proof plan for solving it. Today, I will offer you one approach that might work. My guest is Robert

Barnett, co-founder of the Modern Classrooms Project, and the

author of a new book, Meet Every Learners Needs, Redesigning Instruction so all learners can succeed.

In this episode, Rob is going to explain how his approach, which ultimately evolved into the

framework modern classrooms uses, helped him solve the problem of student

absences in his own classroom. And he'll show us how any teacher can get started with it in a very

simple way. Before we get started, I'd like to thank our sponsor, BoClips Classroom, a library of over

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