Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach elementary and have had 2 coworkers test positive for COVID, be moderately sick, and teach through it.

Then they are mildly sick with Covid.

Moderately sick people with COVID are not working unless their job requires them to act like a sick person who is having trouble breathing and can barely make it from sofa to toilet.

I was “mildly” sick with Covid last spring. My most apparent symptoms was a light, dry cough I could often suppress. I even followed some online workouts a few times. BUT my body aches so badly I could hardly sit still. I had daily headaches. I was so exhausted that I napped three times per day. You never would have known this watching me on Zoom. There was still no way I could have done two hours of grading a d two hours of lesson planning per day in addition to teaching duties and parent communications.

Everyone experiences every malady differently. Never assume.

Most employers that have employees who are working from home are also requiring them to work from home if they are isolating - of course a teacher who is isolating due to exposure but who is not sick should be teaching. Otherwise, that teacher would just be sitting around doing nothing AND they'd be using up some of their vacation/sick time.

Now a sick teacher should be focusing on their health and not teaching (unless they just have the very mildest symptoms that they would have been coming in to school with in a normal year anyway).

Nobody has answered that question for my school - if we get quarantined - can we teach remote - or do we use up all of our sick leave after the first round? Yet another argument for staying remote since teachers will be likely to have to quarantine multiple times - unless the school/school system lies or "mitigates" because they moved desks and it was "less than 15 minutes exposure" and they will disinfect the door handle just in case...

As far as teaching with mildest of symptoms - like in a normal year - did you mean like my "mild" walking pneumonia? Due to lack of substitutes, many of my colleagues and I don't do sick leave.

Our tiny district (not in DC area) is having trouble with subs...so, neither of my kids have had a sub all year. All teachers have taught from quarantine and one taught through being covid+.

I don’t know why they wouldn’t teach while quarantined, they were already set up for remote anyway. The kids all attend school while quarantined.

The teacher who was covid+ seemed totally fine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s great that teachers in quarantine want to give students as much continuity as possible.

I do worry about employers who insist that others don’t seem too sick, so they can probably work. (I work full time and have an invisible disability, so I am probably more sensitive to this.) A lot of folks with non-life-threatening Covid still feel completely exhausted. They may not look or sound terribly ill, but they can feel awful. I sincerely hope that those folks aren’t getting pressured into teaching.

+1 I also hope this but I think that some people are being pressured. As you point out, people can look fine but feel awful. And because there is no workman's compensation teachers are forced to use their own sick leave. It is a horrible spot to be in and, to me, it is akin to cutting off our noses to spite our faces. If a teacher doesn't have enough sick leave then the time would be without pay AND the teacher would not be eligible for unemployment. That's crazy to me.

It's not crazy. It's the law, and many workplaces are like this that are not schools.

If I get COVID at work you better believe I am not picking up a single math manipulative while I’m home, asymptomatic or on a ventilator. There is no world in which schools should be open even as elected officials continue to tell us that January will be the darkest month of our country’s history. If I have to hear one more time that gathering together with my parents and siblings will inevitably kill dozens of people but commuting to work with hundreds of strangers on public transit and gathering indoors for 7 hours a day with coughing, sneezing kids is fine, I will scream.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can do this and avoid taking COVID leave or sick time. You only get COVID leave once for 10 work days maximum, so if you have to quarantine twice (which has already happened to some teachers, due to being exposed to sick students or staff) you would be out of luck for the duration of the second period.

Teachers can expected to be quarantined multiple times.

Except not really. I’ve had 2 students get it, but they only have you quarantine if the kid reports that they were within 6 feet of you for 15 minutes or more.

In both of my cases the kid or the kid’s parent told me they had it, and when I checked with admin about 1 they told me I shouldn’t know.

So, while I feel like I should have quarantined twice I didn’t.

Having said that, there are no subs and I have curriculum to get through. If I had to quarantine and was well enough to teach, I’d want to do that, especially since

It's great that you have such a great attitude in doing your job.

Please, teachers, refrain from drawing conclusions about any sort of diagnosis that you hear from a student or through the grapevine. My DS came home from school last week and said that he had an ear infection because a teacher told him he did. He complained of ear pain in school for ten minutes and she said this. He did not have an ear infection or any other type of infection. Ear pressure happens in young children sometimes. Their ear canals are very small. It does not always mean that infection is present.

Anonymous wrote:I teach elementary and have had 2 coworkers test positive for COVID, be moderately sick, and teach through it.

Then they are mildly sick with Covid.

Moderately sick people with COVID are not working unless their job requires them to act like a sick person who is having trouble breathing and can barely make it from sofa to toilet.

I teach elementary and have had 2 coworkers test positive for COVID, be moderately sick, and teach through it.

Anonymous wrote:Here's the big question do we want to celebrate the fact that people have such little sick leave that they will choose to work while they're sick or recovering from surgery or giving birth ?

??? Uh, yeah, most of the commericial world does but it isn't a good thing.
This isn't what is happening though or what the question was about. It's about well, normal, healthy teachers who are on quarantine as close contacts because they are trying to slow the spread and be apart of the healthy, established and working safety mitigations of most private schools but are willing to continue to teach remotely -- because they are healthy - because it's established as a method in their schools already - and because they are not suffering or ill.


wth. people. good grief.

Here's the big question do we want to celebrate the fact that people have such little sick leave that they will choose to work while they're sick or recovering from surgery or giving birth ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s great that teachers in quarantine want to give students as much continuity as possible.

I do worry about employers who insist that others don’t seem too sick, so they can probably work. (I work full time and have an invisible disability, so I am probably more sensitive to this.) A lot of folks with non-life-threatening Covid still feel completely exhausted. They may not look or sound terribly ill, but they can feel awful. I sincerely hope that those folks aren’t getting pressured into teaching.

+1 I also hope this but I think that some people are being pressured. As you point out, people can look fine but feel awful. And because there is no workman's compensation teachers are forced to use their own sick leave. It is a horrible spot to be in and, to me, it is akin to cutting off our noses to spite our faces. If a teacher doesn't have enough sick leave then the time would be without pay AND the teacher would not be eligible for unemployment. That's crazy to me.

Just because you are quarantined does not mean you are sick. Our teachers who are teaching remotely because of quarantine are because they are close contacts.
I think most employers aren't being that callous. Just because a school is open doesn't mean it's a horrible place to work.

Yes. Common.

Anonymous wrote:It’s great that teachers in quarantine want to give students as much continuity as possible.

I do worry about employers who insist that others don’t seem too sick, so they can probably work. (I work full time and have an invisible disability, so I am probably more sensitive to this.) A lot of folks with non-life-threatening Covid still feel completely exhausted. They may not look or sound terribly ill, but they can feel awful. I sincerely hope that those folks aren’t getting pressured into teaching.

+1 I also hope this but I think that some people are being pressured. As you point out, people can look fine but feel awful. And because there is no workman's compensation teachers are forced to use their own sick leave. It is a horrible spot to be in and, to me, it is akin to cutting off our noses to spite our faces. If a teacher doesn't have enough sick leave then the time would be without pay AND the teacher would not be eligible for unemployment. That's crazy to me.

It’s great that teachers in quarantine want to give students as much continuity as possible.

I do worry about employers who insist that others don’t seem too sick, so they can probably work. (I work full time and have an invisible disability, so I am probably more sensitive to this.) A lot of folks with non-life-threatening Covid still feel completely exhausted. They may not look or sound terribly ill, but they can feel awful. I sincerely hope that those folks aren’t getting pressured into teaching.

If only ONE round quarantine is covered, I would teach via Zoom that round. But if the subsequent rounds have to come out of my sick leave, I will not do distance learning while on leave.

Sick leave is money. You may not think of it that way, but when you retire, you can exchange leftover leave for cash. But also if you run out of leave and are too sick to work, you don’t get paid. Working while on your own sick leave is paying to work.