Year 12 – Week 9: Taking a Sick Day

I remember hearing early in my teaching career that the most important thing you can do to take care of your students is to take care of yourself. If you are sick, then you can’t be there for your students. I have said this other teachers throughout my teaching career, but I got to be honest. There are many times I haven’t followed this advice.

I can think of numerous occasions in my teaching career when I came to work sick or stayed at work when I was starting to get sick. I remember one instance coming in and teaching when I was so congested that I could barely talk, let alone sing, but I came in anyway.

Why?

Some teachers like to show that they are tough. This manifests in teachers showing off their “teacher voice” and refusing to use a microphone, teachers staying working late, and probably worse of all, powering through being sick and coming to school.

You often hear teachers bemoan that “it’s harder to create sub plans than coming in and teaching.” Some schools have very unforgiving sick day policies. Also, other teachers feel pressure to keep their students moving forward academically and are afraid of lost learning when they are absent.

There have always been risks of a teacher coming in when they are sick. Teachers could get sicker themselves, and one teacher who even has minor symptoms can spread a virus to their many students.

When COVID-19 hit, one of the significant changes in schools was a hard stop in many schools to teachers coming into school sick. This, combined with the higher standard of health to let students come to school meant that I have had to take more days off to be with my children at home.  I have taken far more sick days in the past year than in previous years.

Seeing this coming, I have structured units and included technology in my classes to set up tools so that if I am absent, the students can still engage in productive work. It doesn’t cause me as much stress to take a sick day as it has in the past. Part of it is that often I don’t have a choice and I need to accept sick days as part of my job.

My school won’t let me teach sick even if I tried, but I think the main thing is that the pandemic has finally helped me truly understand that the best way to take care of students is to take care of myself. Showing toughness or having a level of “self-sacrifice” is just ego, and no one is impressed.

Moving forward, if we want to do right by our students and create a healthier school atmosphere, we need to remove barriers for teachers to take sick days and take care of themselves. Talk of self-cares by school leaders is meaningless without structural change that encourages teachers to care for themselves.

There’s been a change in how I think about self-care, and there needs to be a change in how Americans help teachers take care of themselves.