So, like all of you said, I didn't go into work today.

[xiphias]

Hebrew school fell apart, and it was a disaster.

I should have gone.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

nope. how many kids would you have infected?

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

If the place can't cope without you, someone needs to plan for how it can, because it's not a good idea to ahve one perosn be the differnce between functioning and disaster.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

There's only four of us.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

If one of them gets sick, does it fall apart as well?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I've done things like teach two classes at once.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

For a while, there was one other person at work who was as fast as me doing what I do. If either of us was out sick, things went to shit. It's a crappy situation to be in, and I'm sorry you have to deal with it.

[ailbhe]

So you could have infected twice as many kids? great.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's misleading. There are four paid teachers. There are also a number of volunteers.

The fact remains that I'm the most skilled teacher of the lot, and best able to deal with unexpected situations. I'm the plan for how things work when things fall apart.

[redbird]

Sending the kids home with your illness wouldn't have been an improvement, by any standard (including that they'd have lost a lot more learning time that way than by having one day's Hebrew school not work).

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I just lost, oh, 7% of my Judaic teaching time for the year.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I tried to carry on with life as normal last week despite feeling sort of bad. Now I am really sick.

Staying home when you're sick is not only a basic courtesy to everyone else, it's the best thing to do for yourself.

[redbird]

Yes, but that's not the only factor. How much would be lost if (a) most of your students lost 7% of their Judaic learning time for the year next week, (b) they also lost 1-2 percent of their secular learning time for the year, and (c) some of their parents had to take time off from work to be home with sick children?

All that disregards that being sick is unpleasant.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

And add to that (d) some of those parents caught the virus from their kids, and got sick enough they had to miss work.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

All die. Oh, the embarrassment.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Aaaugh! what happened? Mass chaos, dogs and cats, living together?

[ron_newman]

Regardless of what happened in your absence, staying home was still the right thing to do.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

If you'd been able to, you should have gone. The fact that things fell apart without you doesn't mean you were wrong to stay home; it just means that they weren't prepared to deal with your absence. That is not your fault, but that of the people in charge of the school--nobody should be completely indispensable.

[ailbhe]

I'm glad you didn't go. If they had any idea how sick you could have made them, so would they be glad. I mean, this thing makes you *cough* - what better way to spread?

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Ditto all the comments about how it's better that you stayed home. Think about it. Would it really have been better for the students to spend weeks feeling as ill as you've been feeling, missing not only Hebrew School, but secular school as well? That would have been the likely result of your going in. It's unfortunate that the other teachers couldn't cope without you, but in the grand scheme of things, one lost day of classes isn't that big a deal.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I understand that you're depressed, and so you want to beat yourself up about the fact the school fell apart for the day. But really, unless you could have gone in wearing a germ-proof mask, and kept that on all day, and constantly washed your hands with alcohol steriliser and disposed of any dirty tissues in a sealed plastic bag - you would have spread the virus on to other people. And all the coughing would have made it hard for you to talk, let alone teach - and you'd have had to keep taking sips of water or juice or whatever, which would mean taking off the mask - and then when the kids and the other teachers get sick, it's a waste of a lot more than 7% of the year.

It's not a disaster. These things happen. When I was doing teacher training, I learnt that in a well-organised regular school, the curriculum should ideally have slack time built into them: because of unforseen teacher absence or other emergencies like a sudden lack of equipment (can happen, if Year 11 are doing coursework and need all the microscopes, and Year 7 just have to mark time for a bit). Should everything go swimmingly for the year, the slack time can be used for extra exam preparation and revision. Should the class slip drastically behind, the slack time is used to make sure they have, in fact, learnt everything they should do.

You'll just have to make sure that your next few classes are extra efficient to get the time caught up, that's all.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Did you miss the bit toward the beginning of the year where I noted that my task for the year is genuinely impossible?

Heh.

"Slack time."

Twenty-five hundred years of Jewish history in ten hours over the course of a year. Six hours left. Have almost covered the first four hundred years.

Okay, to be fair: the fact that the task is impossible means that I don't actually have a great deal of stress about the fact that I'm going to fail at it.