To Sick Day, or Not To Sick Day?

The bell for lunch rings and students hurry off to jockey for position in the serpentine cafeteria line, leaving various items in their wake. My stomach is also grumbling, but my teacher brain tells me to sweep the classroom and look for left behind water bottles, lunch bags, and pencil cases before heading to the lounge to grab my sandwich. I find two erasers, one Hydroflask, and a wooden pencil so small it’s only suitable for Bilbo Baggins. After placing the items in the lost & found box, I head to the front office. Halfway to my destination it hits me.

Uh oh. I think I’m getting sick.

Damnit.

I still have two classes to go before the end of the school day. A quick check of my symptoms tells me I can make it just fine to the end of the school day. It’s the next day I immediately begin worrying about. If things get worse, I won’t be in much of any shape to deliver any kind of decent lesson to my students. 

I grab a rapid Covid test from the office, snag my sandwich from the overstuffed communal fridge, and retreat to my classroom for some cost/benefit analysis. After shoving a cotton swab up my nose and punching in the needed info into the companion iPhone app, I wait 15 minutes and begin planning.

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I have no idea how sick days work in other professions. All I know is that taking a sick day as a teacher is extremely inconvenient, and sometimes more costly than just battling through it the next day. Allow me to explain.

The lesson pacing for a school year is extremely delicate, requiring careful planning as a team and consistent revision. We are expected to teach, assess, and reteach a long list of standards over the course of 180 days. In some cases an accelerated math course requires covering 1.5 years worth of material in the same 180 days. This is almost impossible to do. Taking a sick day almost guarantees that I cannot do the lesson I had planned to do, and requires completely revamping my lesson for the next day, and shifting the entire pacing guide back a day. Every once in a while I get extremely lucky and a sick day falls on the same day I would have normally done seat work or review. I believe this has happened maybe twice in my entire career.

Along with the disruption to lesson pacing, taking a sick day also requires making a detailed lesson plan for the substitute. Over the years I have been able to create a template that works pretty well, trying to incorporate everything a sub would need in order to have a successful day. Even with a streamlined approach, creating the plan still takes a few hours, which I’m usually doing after school while progressively feeling worse. I update seating charts, highlight students with special needs, make sure the emergency backpack rosters are accurate, make copies and label them all with clear sticky notes, create Google Slide decks for each class to follow, and organize the entire classroom. All told, the moment I decide to take a sick day I know I have about 2 hours of work to do before I can go home and be sick.

This brings me to the substitute. I must preface this by saying that I have great respect for anyone in this profession, especially over the past 3 years. Being a sub during Covid must be extremely challenging, and I tip my cap to anyone who has stuck with it. I know that our district was absolutely desperate for subs the first two years, and frequently had to send administrators from the district office to cover absences. The job is very challenging, and you never know what you are going to get. 

That being said….

I only ask for two things from a substitute teacher in my room:

1. Keep the students safe.
2. Just follow the plan.

I work really hard to make sure everything is ready for you to have a successful day. I’m not asking you to teach a new concept, because I don’t know your level of math expertise and it wouldn’t be fair to you. All I need is for you to arrive on time, read the plan I have left for you, and make sure it gets done. 

I wish I could say this is what happens every time.

I always know how the sub day went the moment I open the classroom door. Just look at the floor. The amount of trash on the floor tells you everything you need to know. High trash volume means the students were not behaving well, or the sub was not in control. It’s an instant indicator of whether I should keep the sub on my preferred list or not. 

After that, look at where the lesson handouts should be. If they are mostly gone, that’s a pretty good sign. One time I came back to a room with every handout still on the table. I asked the students what happened and they informed me the sub spent all 55 minutes telling life stories. He was never asked back to my room. On my most recent sick day, I returned to find many of the handouts stuffed in the supply bins at each table group. When I collected the work from the students the next day, not a single one had completed the work in some of the classes. Apparently they decided to do Karaoke in class instead. Cool.

Most of the time the sub does a great job and manages the day. It’s really all I can ask for. Sometimes they go above and beyond, grading assignments, cleaning the room, and helping students during tutorial. Every now and then it’s a disaster. One year I had a woman who went around telling my most fragile math students in my intervention class that they would never get into college. I made sure she never came back to our school again. 

It’s the unpredictable nature of it all that is the most challenging part. Every day of middle school brings different challenges, and it’s not like I’m always at my best. We all have bad days, teachers and students alike. The hard part is knowing that no matter how well you plan and prepare, you still have no control of what is happening in your classroom.

To sick day, or not to sick day?

Early in my career I would never take a sick day, no matter how bad I felt. I just always figured it would be easier to tough it out. Looking back, this was not a wise decision. A cold that should have lasted 3 days stretched on for weeks at a time. I would go to work when I literally could not speak, and I figured that pantomiming my lesson was still better than not being there. One time I got a concussion on a Sunday night while playing hockey and taught the next day in sunglasses because the overhead projector was so bright I couldn’t think straight. Probably should have stayed home on that one.

Working through Covid-19 these past three years has taught me to value my own health more, as well as the health of my students. Last year I took three sick days, which was half as many as I had taken in the previous 17 years. When I started to feel crummy on the second to last day of school, I listened to my body, made the correct choice and took a sick day the next day. I missed 8th grade promotion and was not able to see my students off to high school. The next morning I tested positive for Covid and was glad I decided to stay home.

Despite my growth in respecting my own health, I still feel the desire to “tough it out” when I’m not feeling well. I’m not really feeling that bad, right? I can make it through one more day.

To sick day, or not to sick day?

Sadly, that is still question. One day I hope it won’t be.

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One final thought.

Laurie Unbehand will forever be my most cherished substitute teacher. Smart, witty, confident, and in control. Laurie was always my first choice when trying to get a sub. Laurie knew the math, would always follow the lesson plan, and could be trusted to teach new concepts with skill. Laurie had four children of her own, all of whom attended our school over the years. On days that she was subbing for another teacher we would joke in the lounge that somehow I avoided having all of her children in my class. She knew many of the students because they were friends or teammates with her own children, and she used this expertly to her advantage. If a student she knew was behaving poorly she would bust out her cell phone and ask if she needed to call their parents and let them know how they were behaving. Best of all, Laurie was kind, and truly cared about all of the students in her temporary classroom. 

Cancer stole Laurie from her family way too soon, and I think about her from time to time in my daily work. I still have one of the pencils that was given out at her memorial service encouraging the owner to always keep learning. It’s in my pencil jar on my desk as a small reminder of the good she did in the world.

Thank you Laurie for always keeping my students on task, learning, and cared for.