I like to tell people that I'm a teacher; my subject is "Behavior" and the entire campus is my classroom. When we started tardy sweeps last week, my class became the least popular--overnight. Students seem to think that promptness is not their responsibility. They must, because when we caught 60 or 70 on the first day, first period, we heard excuses ranging from "My Mom got me here late" to "The line at Starbucks was insane." I'm not kidding about either of those, by the way.
I think what really gets me the most is that everyone has been fighting us on this. Students don't want to get detention for breaking the rules, and they're actually willing to risk suspension by standing there and screaming at us (note: we only ended up giving detention to the habitually tardy and truant; yes, we looked up the attendance records of EVERY SINGLE ONE of them). The parents think it's unfair that we enforce the school schedule. THE PARENTS THINK IT'S UNFAIR THAT THEIR KIDS BE TO SCHOOL ON TIME. They have seventeen hours to get to first period and we're being unfair. A few teachers were caught sneaking kids into their classrooms after the sweep lockdown so that their students wouldn't get caught.
Why am I only one of about a dozen people at this school who wants to teach these kids something about life?
Helpful hints, position essays, and useless blather from the Assistant Principal of a high school in Southern California. Posts here do not necessarily reflect the positions or views of the school or district with which he is employed.
So there.
So there.
Adherence to somebody else's schedule is a useful trick to master, but I don't think it's really anything to do with life outside of school.
However, I also think that, if you've made a (tacit) agreement to go to class on time, you should be made accountable for failing to do that, and that any action that potentially disrupts a class for over twenty other students is allowed to perpetuate.
Because there are so many other people involved, schools can never run on a flexible schedule. Parents might need to be reminded that their child--no matter how gifted--is not the center of the school's universe. In school, as in outer space, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one).