TORRINGTON – Nicole Clayton scrolled through a spreadsheet on the computer in her empty science classroom.
“Teachers fill this out. Student name. The date it was assigned. Subject. And the assignment,” she said pointing to each column. “At the end of the day, I’m going to have these kids that have the little box that says ‘Clayton.’ So they’re all going to be up in my room.”
In just over five hours, a brand new initiative would debut at Torrington High School: Mandatory Make-up Monday, or 3M for short.
Clayton, a science teacher, and Angie Schultz, who teaches English, contemplated what it would look like to have students take more responsibility for the assignments they were missing.
“It’s a 50-50 road,” Clayton said. “The kids also have to put in their effort to get the work done – not always the teacher calling home and the teacher finding them.”
The structure of 3M is straightforward: Around Wednesday of each week, a teacher can hand a student a green slip of paper with the name of a missing assignment. The notice advises the student to stay for an hour after school on Monday to complete the assignment. A phone call goes to the student’s parents, on Friday, informing them, too.
If the student finishes the assignment before Friday, they are excused. To get out of 3M after Friday, they will need to do their work and receive an orange Liberty Pass from the teacher as proof of completion.
For the first week, Clayton said she handed out 40 3M slips, out of her 84 total students.
“I think I took maybe 10 of them off last week because it was done,” she said. “It was amazing at how many were like, ‘How do I get out of this?’ You just get your work done.”
She emphasized that teachers do not refer kids to 3M because they are failing. The purpose of the intervention is different.
“Right now, I have a lot of kids in 3M that have 100 percent in my class,” she said. “But we’ve been doing a lab and they’re behind in the lab. So it’s not just grade-dependent. It can be. But it’s also if the kid is behind on work.”
“Let’s stop the madness”
After the final period ended at 3:35, Clayton’s classroom door swung open and students shuffled to their places at high-topped lab tables.
“What we originally planned is having them all meet in one room and we would divide them out,” Clayton explained. “But because there’s so many of them, Chase decided to just assign to the teacher and the kids would meet up in the teacher’s room,” she said, referring to Principal Chase Christensen.
In the hallway, she ran into Schultz.
“I’m headed down to 107,” Schultz told her.
“You stay in your room,” Clayton corrected her, saying that someone would be in room 107 to send the students to their teachers. Schultz paused.
“That’s a change.”
Clayton reiterated that so many kids were here for 3M that having nearly 100 in one room would have presented challenges.
“I totally just sent everybody back down there,” Schultz admitted. Clayton laughed.
“You’re sabotaging this!” she joked.
While Clayton retreated to her classroom, Schultz turned to address a young man who was searching through his backpack for his assignment.
“This is all about bringing your grade up. If it’s done, give it to me now,” she prodded him.
“It’s somewhere in here…” he trailed off, bending down to search through his papers. After a minute of exploration, he appeared pained.
“I have it done, I just don’t know where it is.”
Schultz reassured him that he wasn’t in trouble.
“Just make sure you have it tomorrow. Don’t freak out. Okay? Deep breath.”
She nodded to another student who had sidled up next to her.
“You’re with me.”
She unlocked her classroom. Ten students were on her 3M list. Two of them had Liberty Passes. Three were with another science teacher. The whereabouts of one male student she didn’t know. Only the student from the hallway, Joshua Stitt, was present.
“He’s one of our high school golfers,” Schultz said. “He misses quite a bit of class, so it’s a good way to make assignments up. Especially ones that are two weeks overdue.”
Stitt shrugged. “Roughly.”
“Smart kid, just doesn’t have the time,” she added. “And that’s pretty much what 3M is. It’s an intervention. So we can say, ‘Okay, let’s stop the madness. You can work with your teacher. Let’s get this taken care of.’”
How did Stitt feel when Schultz asked him to come in?
“I kind of knew that I had to, so I wasn’t mad,”he said.
“The last time I saw Josh, he was like, ‘All right, I’ll get it done over the weekend while I’m at the tournament,’” she said.
“And it didn’t happen,” Stitt admitted. “I still don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That’s why I’m here to answer your questions,” Schultz nodded, leaning down to discuss the main characters in the writing assignment.
In Clayton’s classroom, by contrast, every seat was full. Her students surrounded her, holding notebooks and asking for guidance.
“I’m looking for a conclusion to part one and part two….Show me on the microscope where you’re going to find the numbers for the magnification....Miguel? Hey, it’s nice to see you,” she admonished a student who wandered in late.
The school administration formalized the expectations for students sent to 3M. A “no show” means the student is absent, is present with no work in hand, or is present but refuses to work. After the first no show, the classroom teacher contacts the parents. For repeat offenses, the administration continues to inform the parents and institutes steadily-harsher on-campus lunch penalties.
The goal is not to be punitive, but there need to be consequences in order for the students to meet their obligations. Once a student finishes the assignment, they may leave 3M.
Christensen, who tracks attendance data, said afterward that 65 out of 89 assigned students had shown up – a 73 percent attendance rate.
“It was reported to me that parent contacts were almost all positive,” he said of the students who were no shows. “Parents were supporting the program.”
In addition to 3M, there is an “academic success” period on other weekdays, in which students voluntarily stay to receive help with assignments. Clayton said she was seeing six or seven students attend before 3M. Once she handed out green slips, she said the number jumped to 30.
“It’s exhausting,” she said of the days when every teacher was on his or her own to prod kids to turn in their work.
“There wasn’t an intervention in place to take care of the problem before it became a problem,” said Schultz. “It was all of the teachers being reactive to homework being turned in two-and-a-half months late. I’m like, why should we do this and why should we accept it when it’s two-and-a-half, three months late and I’m having to meet the deadlines for the grades at the end of the semester?”
Two other boys had arrived in her classroom and began to work. Softly in the background, music by The Police was playing.
“I’ll be watching you,” the lyrics went.
