Life happens. I get that. Sometimes when life happens it makes a student late for their lesson. What goes through a teacher's mind when the lesson is supposed to start and there is no student in sight?
1) Are they OK? I'm always concerned that something has happened to them. Are they sick? Hurt? In trouble?
2) Did they forget? It happens. People get confused about what day it is. Something out of the ordinary breaks the routine and they forget the lesson. We rescheduled their lesson for a different day that week and they forgot to update their calendar. Plenty of things can make people forget.
3) After a few minutes go by, I wonder if they are on their way and hit traffic (or are having a tech issue that's keeping them from logging on.
4) Contact them after 5 mintues to see if they are still coming.
5) Figure out what parts of the lesson plan to cut out if they do come.
6) Depending on if I have heard from the student, I will either wait for ten minutes, then work on something else if I have not heard from them. If I have heard and they are on their way, I complete the shortened lesson plan and pick the super top priorities to work through in what time we have.
The main thing I hope you get from this is that running late occasionally is fine. I understand that it happens. But when it does, please let me know what is going on. If you are coming and when you expect to arrive. This makes it way less stressful when your 30 minute lesson turned into a 15 minute lesson since I had a chance to prepare for it...and saved my from worrying that you are OK.
Comments