More than Half of Ontario Students Aren’t Showing Up

The definition for “chronic absenteeism” in Ontario is missing more than 10 percent of a school year—roughly eighteen days or two days per month. The previous year, in the eleventh grade, at the height of my disobedience, I had long overshot this threshold. I’m still not sure exactly how many days I missed. Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred. I just knew I had opted out of every class I could.