I am cursed[1]. I am surrounded by a sea of transmuted figures, bearing some but not a distinct likeness to their former selves. Slumped and unresponsive, stumbling through the halls of my high school with an arrested gait and in a constant stupor. Hunched over desks as if the desks themselves were magnetized and their brains were oppositely magnetized. The desk seems to call to their heads, inching them closer and closer…
Being spoken to might temporarily break the haze, and elicit a “could you repeat that” or — more tragically comic to me — “yes, definitely” as a response to “What might cause the answer to be 0?”
There are days when these beings don’t come to school. Days, mind you, is plural. There are campus preview weekends, of course. Soon will come AP exams, where mysteriously on the day before the exam, one might be absent. Coupled with the day of the exam, and we have two more days, gone. Mental zombies.
These beings are mere shadows of what they were before.
[1] Okay, okay, I know I’m not cursed. I love my seniors. But fourth quarter is trying for me, because it is trying for them.
Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere 
Agreed. I don’t remember it being a big issue when I was in high school (maybe because I and my friends were do-gooders), but at this school, they seem to almost claim “senioritis” as a right. It’s like more than an excuse but something they feel like they’ve earned after years of schooling.
Oh well…like the teachers who give the state exams, you try to cram in as much as you can before the test and then coast until the end. I think we just have to do that with seniors, too.
I honestly can’t remember if I was afflicted with senioritis or not. I bet I was.
The way I’ve dealt with it is to talk to both my classes about the true nature of the fourth quarter.
I say “It’s a fake quarter because it is shorter, you have less time in class because of senior week and random days off, you have college visits, and you have AP exams”). And then I say that even with these interruptions, we’ll forge forward as we always have done, and you need to be hyperconscious about what you’re missing if you miss class. You have resources in me, in your colleagues, in the textbook, and in the Smartboard presentations. The same rules apply for homework when you’re absent as they have been all year. So with fewer class days, and fewer assessments, don’t drop the ball. It may be a lot harder to pick it back up in the fourth quarter.”
Basically the expectations are clear and students have the resources to meet them. If they want to do so is their decision. I’m really hoping that they do.