Schoolhouse Cooties
Holidays seem to be the best and worst times for teachers. They look forward to the break and are excited to have some family time, but also pay a price to even make it to those points in the year. It seems like by the time a break comes around they’re just moments away from giving up. Every aspect of your life needs a recharge.
So picture this, you’ve made it through August - no breaks, September - a 3 day weekend for Labor Day, October - a 4 day weekend thanks to “Fall break”, and then we approach November. YESSSSSSSSSS!!!! It’s time for Thanksgiving Break! An entire 5 school days off of work, but 9 glorious days in a row that you aren’t responsible for 4 to 6 classes rotating in and out, sometimes with 30 kids in each. To be honest, this isn’t even what teachers need a break from the most, it’s very rarely the students. No school for a teacher means no extra duties, no waiting until 3pm to go to the bathroom, no planning meetings, no class coverage, no taking attendance (or forgetting to take attendance), no uniform checks, no parent phone calls, no team meetings, no inhaling your lunch in 4 minutes, and lastly, no stress!
So here you are, the Friday before Thanksgiving break moments away from freedom! You decide to tidy up your classroom really quickly, straighten the desks, make sure everything gets wiped down, put the date you will return on your whiteboard (since you most likely will be late on that first day back after a holiday), make sure your teacher desk is somewhat cleared off and ready for your return, and then it happens, you get the tiniest tickle in the back of your throat. You brush it off as a result of talking all day while teaching. So you keep going, continue making sure your room is ready, and then there is a sneeze, this is obviously because you are cleaning up, the dust must have triggered a sneeze, that’s it. You finish up, hop in your car, and start making a mental list of all the things you are going to do on this awesome nine day break, or if you’re like most of the teachers I know, a list of all the things you are NOT going to do. Some teachers may start off ambitious and say they will sleep in, take naps, read books, and stay in their sweatpants all day. Those are always the best intentions. A couple more sneezes during your commute home, a little cough, and could I be feeling….feverish???No, I am not sick. I have made it from August to November without so much as a cold. Oh well, good thing I have all these days to just chill out. And then when you get home, you remember, you have your own kids, who are also off of school for 9 days! Adios to the relaxing. But at least you get to hang out with your kids right? Enjoy some time with them without having to worry about homework, bedtime, and all of the other craziness you deal with during a work week. Okay, we will make the best of it. You decide you won’t worry about the 17 loads of laundry, 6 stacks of papers you need to grade, or the idea of getting ahead on lesson plans, instead we will have a week of fun, maybe a trip to the movies, or bowling, or maybe even the zoo if the weather allows it. You finally settle into bed, turning off all of your alarms for the following week, because you will be getting out of bed whenever you’re damn well ready to. (Just kidding, your kids are coming to tell you they are starving at 6:05 am every single morning!!!) You notice your head is hurting a little, but you chalk it up to having a busy week before a holiday break, it’s nothing a few pain relievers can’t get rid of. Ahh, a good night's rest is all you need to recharge and feel refreshed.
Wanna know what you wake up to instead?
The worst damn cold you have had in months. Your head hurts, your throat is sore, your whole body feels bruised, you can’t stop coughing and sneezing, and to top it off, is that nausea? Is this the flu? Is it COVID? Shit! One of my students said she had Strep throat last week, did I catch it? No. Maybe it’s just exhaustion, or one of those 48 hour bugs. There is absolutely no way I am full blown sick when I finally have a break from work. Except I am completely sick, during my holiday break. So is bowling still on? Nah. But at least the movies? Nope. You get to spend the next week trying to mend yourself while caring for your children. You can’t miss work the Monday after a holiday, you have to do whatever it takes to feel better.
Did you know that taking a sick day for a teacher is actually worse than going to their campus sick? Of course we would love to say that teachers stay home while they are sick so they don’t pass it around to other employees or students. But unfortunately, that isn’t the case, and not because teachers love going to work sick. Do you know how hard it is to get a substitute lined up weeks, or even months in advance? Super difficult. You can imagine how much harder it is to get a substitute the night before or the morning of a sick day. So you get all of your sub plans together, organized, very detailed, but there is no sub to call. You can still be absent but then who will watch your class? Your colleagues. But that makes you feel guilty, so you decide to say screw it, I will just take a ton of Dayquil and hope I can make it through the day.
How the hell is that fair? How many jobs do you know of that don’t allow for someone to be sick? Not many. If my husband is sick, he just sends an email to his boss, stays home and rests, and then catches up when he returns. Teachers surely can’t do that. To have a sick day as a teacher, it takes steps:
Actually decide you are so damn sick that you can’t force yourself to go to work. This actually takes the longest time out of everything because you’re trying to figure out how many times you can realistically make it to the bathroom if you have a stomach bug, or how much you can convince your students to be quiet for the day because you have an awful migraine. But you finally decide, you need to be home.
Email the principal and assistant principal to let them know you won’t be at work tomorrow.
Text one of your teaching buddies and ask them to cover your 47 duties for tomorrow.
Email the inclusion teachers and any other support staff that your students have, to let them know you will be out.
Start looking for a sub, text the two sweet saints you know that are still willing to come to your school. Then, put your absence in whatever system your district uses and pray someone picks it up.
Get a text back from both of the ladies you texted, letting you know that they are not available.
Get together all the instructions for your students and post them to your Google Classroom. Make sure every possible question that they could come up with is already answered in the FAQ section of your instructions.
Email those directions and assignments to your teaching partner so she can print them out. You know, so the kids can have a digital and hard copy, so they can claim they didn’t know what to do in any format.
Check to see how bad this is going to screw up your pacing.
Take all the meds and go to sleep.
Wake up an hour earlier to check and see if a sub picked up the job. NO, OF COURSE THEY DIDN’T!!!
Find some clothes that don’t make you feel even more miserable and then put them on.
Cancel your sub and let your principal and assistant principal know that you will, in fact, be at work, because there are never any mother fucking subs!!!!
Cry during your drive to work.
Teach while sick.
THE END!!!!!
It is obviously a very brief process.
Would you take a sick day if you had to do the same thing?
Shout out to all of the teachers that are exhausted but fighting their way to make it to Christmas break. You are appreciated, you are seen, you are respected, and you are loved.
