Well this is why…
I’m home with my son right now, because he has a cold. I went to work and taught my three morning classes, but I left during my prep so my husband could get some work done during the afternoon.
My husband has A LOT more flexibility than I do, and 95% of the time he stays with the kids when they are sick. But sometimes that is not possible, or not preferable, because he also has a job and things to do.
One of the reasons I have not taken any days since early September is because I was terrified of Covid making its way slowly through our family, requiring I quarantine at home for two weeks or more. Now I wouldn’t have to stay home if one of my kids tested positive, so that takes some of the pressure off. We still haven’t had Covid yet, which is part of why all those days are still banked, and I want to keep some days banked in case I do get Covid before the school year ends.
I also want to keep some days banked so I don’t have to go back to the scarcity mentality around sick days in the future. It sucked tracking my every hour away from work and I don’t want to go back to that.
Finally, substitutes remain incredibly hard to find. My colleague also took a mental health day on Friday but there was no sub for her, so other teachers had to give up their prep to take her classes. I, personally, do not feel comfortable with that arrangement. When I’m sick, there isn’t anything I can do about it and if someone needs to cover for me it sucks, but I don’t feel guilty. I would, however, feel very bad about someone giving up their prep time so I could go see a movie with my husband. That does NOT feel okay to me. So as long as there aren’t enough subs (which will probably be for as long as I’m teaching), I will not feel comfortable taking numerous days off just to give myself a break.
I know it’s really hard for lots of people to call in sick, but teachers have to be on the high end of the taking-a-day-requires-crazy-work spectrum. The amount of time spent planning for your absence, and then scoring the work the kids did while you’re gone, is usually equal to the amount of time you were away. It’s just an insane amount of work. This is why it’s good that teachers have so many breaks built into the year!
Do you have to do a lot of work to take a day off? Is harder to prepare before hand, or catch up after?
Makes sense. 🙂 I just find that many people (women especially) are generally reticent to use their PTO days for a variety of reasons, which really reduces the effectiveness of them since we all need those breaks!
For me for the past 10 years it wasn’t that i did much of anything (prep-wise) to take off – but exactly 0% of my job was done while I was gone, so it was always a lot of catching up when I returned. Worth it, though!