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When Students Don't Prepare for Class

By John Norton

In a recent Teacher Leaders Network daily discussion, a high school government teacher—we’ll call this person GovTeach —wrote, in part:

The assignment for Friday's session in my three AP government classes of mainly 10th graders and a scattering of seniors was four pages in the textbook, which I wanted to use as the basis for a discussion and analysis.

In sixth period, I tried to start the discussion and got no response. So I bluntly asked who had read all four pages. Not a single student had. I was both...