I’ve been an attendance clerk for 5 years, and I joined Irvington in 2018. 

Meeting different students and seeing their excitement about school, ideas, or anything in general, is my favorite part about the job. It’s nice to know that they’re also having fun at school, but also nice knowing that I can provide them with a type of support that others may not be able to. If they come to the office with a specific excuse or reasoning as to why they’re not at school, I’m sometimes able to give them advice or just hear them out. Sometimes they just need to have someone to listen to them through something, and being able to be that person for students at Irvington has been really special to me. 

I’m here from 7:30AM to 4PM and through that time, we go through a lot. My priority mainly focuses around the voicemails, so I go through all the voicemails and figure out absences. On Infinite Campus, the notification that a parent’s student is absent goes out at 10AM, so getting the voicemails cleared up before then is really important. A lot of parents don’t realize that sometimes we don’t get to the voicemails right away, so it’s important that we’re on it as soon as possible in order to get it done in time. 

Multitasking is a huge part of the job, along with prioritizing tasks. Knowing your priorities is really important when it comes to my job so that I can figure out what to do in what order, and it helps for organization. It’s something that definitely took a while to catch on, but once it did, made my work ten times easier. 

When I go through the voicemails and figure out absences, I look out for patterns in the reasons that students are absent for. If there’s a certain medical condition that causes them to be sick or a situation going on at home, I want to be able to identify it so that I can help the student with making sure they aren’t chronically absent. By helping them seek medical assistance or making a game plan, I help them by not missing out on school.