December is a time for looking back at the year past, and many bloggers post lists of their 'most read' posts for the calendar year.
For me, the most read post on my blog this year had more than double the readers than the next most read post, and it generated a great deal of discussion on social media. That post was my wonderings on
'why do people come to work when they are sick?'
The responses to my post from those teachers who do show up at school when they are sick fell into three general categories:
1. It is more difficult to prepare for a supply teacher than it is to just 'tough it out' and go to work sick. I get that preparing for a supply teacher is not easy, but if your daybook already contains information on the routines and procedures that don't vary from day to day, then completing supply teacher plans shouldn't be overly daunting. In this day and age when teachers can email their plans to the supply teacher or to their admin, not having a detailed lesson plan already at the school is not an insurmountable obstacle. Years ago my administrator asked each teacher to have an emergency one day and one week day book prepared. My one week plan was literacy based - a read aloud book with aligned literacy and math activities that weren't necessarily connected to our current unit of study, but in an emergency, they would suffice.
2. A supply teacher won't be able to handle my class/teach my lessons the way I would.
A number of people currently working as supply teachers responded that they found this reason for coming to work sick rather insulting. Maybe it won't be done exactly the way you would teach it, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe it will just be 'good enough' and that will be okay for a day or two. Most of us in teaching have worked as supply teachers. In my year of supply teaching, there were times the teacher left lessons that I knew were busy work and practice lessons, saving the key instructional lessons for when he/she returned. That's fine.
Another strategy suggested by many teachers is to enlist your students to take on leadership in your absence. Make sure that they know the rules, routines, and procedures and that they have responsibilities in your absence for ensuring the smooth running of the classroom. Even our youngest learners are capable and competent of assisting a supply teacher. So, if upon your return the literacy centres are a mess, you can follow up with the students who are supposed to be in charge of those centres if and when you are absent.
3. We don't have enough supply teachers and/or occasional ECEs.
This is a tricky balancing act for school boards and unions. There need to be enough supply teachers/ECEs available to cover absences but not so many teachers/ECEs on the supply list that people aren't getting sufficient work. What sometimes happens is that an educator calls in their absence and there is no one available to cover the absence.
Educators are then between a rock and a hard place. If they stay home, too ill to work, they feel guilty because they know their colleagues are going to have to try to cover their absence and their students may have someone different teaching them each period of the day. If they drag themselves to work anyway, then does that relieve some of the pressure on boards and unions to find a solution to the shortage? In our board, when I was working in the program department we went through a period where there were not enough supply teachers. We would begin a workshop or meeting, and teachers would get phone calls from their principal saying, "There's no supply teacher here to cover your absence. You need to come back to the school." After this happened several times, our superintendent met with administrators and told them,
"No more phone calls. Professional learning is important. The work of our consultants is important. Find another solution." Had we continued to accept teachers being pulled from professional learning due to a shortage of supply teachers, there would have been less pressure on Human Resources to hire more supply teachers.
It's never easy being away from work. It's hard to entrust our students and our teaching to someone else. But teaching is hard and it's even harder when you're not feeling well. While our work and our students are important, so is our health. We owe it to our students, our families and ourselves to take care of ourselves.