Working while sick: Our post-pandemic dilemma

For many teachers, who are now in their eleventh term of delivering education in the face of a pandemic, ‘normal’ still feels far away. And with COVID-19 cases refusing to abate, despite the warmer weather, disruption continues to impact our school halls, sports fields, classrooms, and staff rooms.

Already this year, schools have battled waves of COVID alongside influenza and other viruses. Our teachers and staff are affected, and students are at times back at home recovering. Recently a student, stuck at home with COVID, emailed in to ask a valid question around how we should be managing illness. She asked: how sick is too sick?

In this instance, the student was trying to decide if she was too sick to be online to study, or if she should log on and complete her assignments despite feeling unwell. She wrote, “I personally don’t know where the boundary lies between being well enough to do online learning, versus being too sick to log on”.

This is a modern dilemma not only facing students, but also the many employees who are now working both in person and remotely. Collectively we have shown we can work and learn responsibly and productively from home, and because of this, it’s easy to default into remote online formats when you are too unwell (or symptomatic) to learn or work in person.

It used to be that if you were sick, you stayed home and didn’t work or study. Now, being sick might mean you take a day or longer at home, but you keep working because you continue to have access to colleagues, teachers, and the necessary information required to get the job done.

The worry is that some students, educators and employees are reluctant to take a sick day and are instead trying to push through illness and deliver results without considering the rest required to combat ill health and burnout. ‘How sick is too sick’ can now only be answered by deep personal reflection and self-understanding. It can only be answered with an understanding of the importance of sufficient recovery and insight into personal wellbeing.

As we prepare our students to enter the workforce, we must now also prepare them to be able to distinguish when they need to persevere despite an illness and when they need to take a break and focus on both their physical health and mental wellbeing. Instead of ‘how sick is too sick’ perhaps we need to be encouraging our students to ask, ‘am I well enough in body and mind right now’?

This is a fine balance and one that we’re learning to manage in real time. At Strathcona this means we continue to search for the right combination of online and in-person learning to enable those who are absent due to sickness to maintain their studies. We continue to offer education to VCE students online, supporting those who are recovering at home by providing access to lessons, materials, and the support they require should they feel able to study. We promote the importance of taking the time necessary to recover after an illness.