Did you ever miss school for vacation?

Yeah I'd miss a day or two here and there.

Forgetting vacations though, I would skip some classes for a week or two and never had a problem with tests or participation (assignments were something else entirely as I rarely did them truant or not). I found most high school classes to be pretty pointless... so much time wasted on silent reading, home room, lunch, recess etc then there were the classes, with "group work" and "in class exercises," "work on your postcard project" etc. If you actually added up the time spent with useful instruction it would probably amount to 2 hours a day and most of that would be for math lol.

If my high school experience is any indication, I would have no issues taking a kid out for weeks even, if the teacher outlined the readings and assignments. I would not expect a teacher to go out of their way so my kid could go gallivanting and if my kid struggled with school I guess I'd have to reconsider.

Heck... I remember my teachers taking vacation during the school year and we would have a sub for a week lol

Ehm. No, never. I actually have never heard of students being able to go on vacation outside of school breaks

I voted that it depends and I really think that it does depend. Three weeks sounds like quite a bit for a middle schooler (or older grade) to be missing, but I wouldn't necessarily jump to conclusions about the parents being bad parents, etc.

When I was in elementary school, my mom used to give us kids a few "mental health days" per year. Granted, I was already one of those perfectionist little kids so I didn't try to take advantage of it, but I think that it was a brilliant idea. When I think back to my childhood, most of what I remember involves the projects that my parents helped me with, the fun times with classmates, and yes - those few days that I was allowed to wake up and just say "I really don't want to go to school today." It made me feel independent and trust that my parents respected my decisions and of course it was fun! Granted, everything that we missed was to be made up, no exceptions. By middle and high school, I didn't have the desire to do that anymore because I knew that what I would miss would take more time to teach myself than if I were to just go to class. My same philosophy holds now that I'm in college.

It sounds like your students are in a different boat, but just because a parent allows their child to miss school without "reason" doesn't make them bad parents. We once went to disney world in the winter (cheaper...) and were going to have to take a week of school off for it (though it just happened to overlap with some snow days)... and I survived.

As a little sidenote - I'm fairly sure that I went to school in the same county that you are teaching in now (or one very nearby)... despite missing school, I ended up graduating from what was for several years running considered the top public high school in the country and am now at a university.

I just think it's easy to overgeneralize. But I sincerely apologize for the amount of extra time that you'll have to put it to help this girl catch up. That by itself is not right.

EXACTLY!! LOL I remember my mom being like "what do you mean Mrs. Jones is on vacation....she just had 3 months off and it's only been a month of school" hahaha

I think three consecutive weeks is just way too long of a time to expect to be away. A few days...a week...pushing into two weeks..but three weeks is pretty long. I wouldn't be happy with them.

I'm trying to remember if I ever went on a "real" vacation during school and I don't think I did, mainly because we couldn't afford those very often.

But we would go up to Wisc all the time to take care of my grandma, like every other weekend and I would sometimes miss a Monday or a Friday.

I also got pulled out once a year for Apple Picking and for our traditional holiday shopping day.

But if we had had the money to go abroad and it happened to fall during school you bet my parents would have pulled me. What an experience.

I missed a TON of school. I wasn't very healthy as a child, so that took up a lot of it. By the time I got to high school, I missed some school for (documented) medical problems, and some because I was just so done with the high school thing. I probably went 3/5 days a week my senior year. The school never cared - I had no behavioral problems, and I had a 3.8, so I was the least of their problems. My mom never cared either, as long as I kept the good grades up.

I do think, however, for kids that are struggling in school, that taking an extended vacation is a bad idea, especially if you as a parent can't help them catch up.

The most I've taken off was a week, but I can definitely see taking more off if you were going to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience, be it bonding deeply with your family or experiencing another culture.
I'm sure it's hard on the teachers when such huge gaps pop up, though. I think the student/parents need to carry more responsibility and perhaps do an online course for the semester if it'll be such an expansive gap, or be prepared to have summer school to make up work. That would all have to be coordinated with the state or district and... blech, it gets to be messy work.

I missed school (quite a bit) for camping trips with scouts... we'd be leaving the Friday night, so I'd stay home Friday day to get ready. that was only missing a day, though.

It's fairly common, though

This too. Kindergarten through grade 3 I missed school 3 days/week for intensive speech therapy. Grades 4 and 5 I never stayed a full day at school as it wasn't safe to do so. Granted, grades 4 and 5 was the teacher's/principal's fault.

In 10th grade the teachers in London, Ontario went on STRIKE for two weeks in the middle of the school year. That time was never "made up". So forgive me if I am not flipping my lid about students going on vacation.

LOL same! My mom does in home daycare too, has for as very long as I can remember... and I would have to miss days of school too to help her out, if she threw out her back or something and wasn't able to lift kids and whatnot

Well I do think a strike is very different. They usually benefit the students anyway (lower student to teacher ratio, teachers getting deserved raises rtc) and since the whole class is missing one is not falling behind the others.

When I was in grade 5 the teachers here went on strike for all of February and it was never made up either.

I missed a week once in 4th grade to go to Disney with my extended family-I just took homework with me. Usually our vacations were planned on school breaks and since my mom was a teacher in the same district that was easy to do.

I think I might pull my kids out for vacation depending on age, how they were doing in school, etc. DH is good at math and has to do advanced math for work, so that would not be an issue and in most cases I could help out with anything else (except for chemistry-we both suck at that). Three weeks seems like a lot though.

No and I don't really think it should be an encouraged or allowed habit either.

The only school I missed was for sickness. In 1st grade I missed a week because I had double pink eye and a double ear infection. I was also stuck out of school for two weeks when I nearly died from a massive pneumonia infection and by the end I was chomping at the bit to get back! I liked school though because all of my friends were there and I loved getting good grades. I always felt my grades weren't as good if I missed school for sickness.

It always blew my mind when people left school for vacation! We have a family at the dojo who just froze their tuition for a month because they're going globe trotting for all of October! Freaking ridiculous if you ask me. I will never take my kids out of school for recreational activities for more than possibly one day. Leaving on Friday for a 3 day weekend is one thing, being gone for weeks is an entirely different beast.

Absolutely not. I think it's ridiculous to just brush off a kid's education because, "Oh, well, it'll be fun for them!"

Yeah. Fun. Especially when the other kids and teachers get to lag around because this kid is behind. Or when the kid gets this great idea that's it's totally cool and no big deal to miss school. Then they take off a week in college only to come back and find out they've failed the entire semester. No do-overs. No catch up. Straight up failure. How's that for "fun"? Ugh. It's ridiculously annoying.

Missing school occasionally for vacation leads to failure in college like slow dancing leads to babies.....

It wasn't all that unusual for families to pull their kids for vacation when I was in school. Never really seemed like a big deal, and although my parents didn't make a habit of it it did happen here and there.