Here at Triton High School, there has always been a monumental controversy with students skipping classes, spending too much time sleeping in, making them tardy, and the immense factor of students not wanting to get out of bed and come to school. Students that wake up and come to school every day and don’t miss a day of school, I don’t know how they can do it.

The majority of students here at Triton have at least been absent from school more than once this year. And about 50% of the school had more than 4 days missed from school, according to…. Students have been losing motivation to get up in the morning and make it to school; being absent from school has become a real problem for students themselves and teachers. Some teachers make plans and base their class on discussions and talking in class, but when half of the class is not present, then how are they supposed to be able to teach their class to the best ability when there are no students to teach to?

According to Bryan Doucette, one of the leading factors in students not having the motivation to come to school is the teaching staff and the school itself. Some students say that their teachers disrespect them, and their principals are not being nice and not caring about what the students feel or think about them. Principles and teachers who are not nice to their students and make them do things they are uncomfortable with, like calling on them if their hands are not up, making them present in front of the class, not allowing them to go to their academic support rooms; these are all reasons leading to students being absent from school.

But the administration doesn’t want to listen to those factors and just thinks that students simply don’t want to go because they don’t like it. Obviously, yes, they don’t like school, but a higher percentage of students don’t want to come because of the environment they are put into. They think that the only issue going on is that students just don’t want to go, so they will get them in trouble or give them detention or Saturday school because of something the administration is doing, and it is something that can be changed.

For example, on January 10, we had a huge rainstorm that brought flooding to the area and downed trees, overall terrible weather conditions for students to travel to school. Multiple buses could not pick up their students until later in the day because of how bad the weather was. Multiple students had car troubles because of the weather, and I had an issue because I almost crashed on my way to school.

Brian Forget and our school’s administration needs to think a lot more about the situations they are putting their students in and change their way of doing things to make it so students would like to come to school and have the motivation to get up and go.