The Absence of COVID-19

The Washington State Department of Health issued guidelines for the 2021-2022 school year in regard to how schools may best mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in their facilities.  This document seems to put a tidy bow on the layered measures school can and should take to ensure student health. And yet, the bow is quickly unraveling through no fault of anyone. 

The state has worked hard to help reduce the number of absences students incur due to COVID-19. This makes sense as absences rates correlate greatly with student success. There are no longer such stringent requirements regarding actions surrounding “close-contacts” and healthy students are able to return more quickly to school if they test negative for COVID-19 during an imposed quarantine time. Many schools are even taking advantage of the Learn to Return program offered that allows for schools themselves to do COVID-19 testing onsite. All of this may have worked beautifully if the Delta variant had not hit and changed the playing field.

I am now hearing from every teacher I know that they have never had so many absences at once. Students are out for weeks at a time, some due to actually having contracted COVID-19 and others due to repeated “close-contact” exposures. Regardless of the cause, we are facing a whole new and unique phase of teaching in the times of COVID-19. We have one foot in the classroom and the other…well, we are not quite sure where to put it.

Almost every teacher I know is in a district that has not clearly outlined the expectations for teaching in regard to students who are either ill with COVID-19 or close-contact quarantined. The general message they are hearing is, “The state wants face-to-face learning if at all possible, and when not possible for students, they must have an equal opportunity to learn.”

Teacher responses have run the gamut. Some teachers are simultaneously live streaming from their classroom to a Google Meet. Others have recorded their lessons and have them available for students. Some have gone the way of packets and others are throwing their assignments on Google Classroom as quick as they can. Any one or all of these strategies may be in use in any given school at one time. Things feel a bit discombobulated and stressful to say the least.

To top it off, all teachers know that when a student is absent, the student is not only missing out on the learning involved in the tangible work to be turned in, they are also missing out on all the nuanced learning to be had in the social exchanges of said learning. This surely creates unease in every teacher’s heart. We get that what we do matters and when we can’t do it effectively, the situation creates its own weather system of stress.

Is there a clear and easy solution to this problem? Probably not. But, I think it is time to start the dialog to move us in that direction…

3 thoughts on “The Absence of COVID-19

  1. Janet L. Kragen

    I created a “gradebook” for this trimester, but half the entries are blank. And the blanks may stay that way permanently.

    I post work on my website for students who are absent, and I put assignments into Google Classroom, but I let parents know that if their child is too sick to do the work, then they shouldn’t worry about it.

    Some students will learn different things than other students this fall. Maybe all this year. I will try to get everyone to learn the essentials, but with some kids out for weeks at a time, even that might be hard. (On the other hand, other students will go well beyond the required curriculum, and I have to provide for their needs as well.)

    For teachers, for students, for families, we will do what we can. We can’t do any more than that.

  2. Emma-Kate Schaake

    I decided to keep all of my classroom on Google Classroom for exactly this reason. Not only am I worried about a potential closure, but the uncertainty of students in and out of the classroom due to exposure or illness is just too daunting to think of any other way. Although I print materials for students in class (because no one need to be learning primarily on a screen), most students are used to the GC organization. One of my colleagues brought up the guilt she has about not live streaming instruction while students are quarantined, but I honestly think we are all at our capacity and can’t even fathom doing that again. My hat is off to those who are choosing that route, but phew!

  3. Lynne Olmos

    You are describing this crazy situation so well. One day, over thirty of my students were absent, most due to quarantine. About a third of all of our students were gone in our small district. And, no, there is no official word on what we are to do. We are congratulated for our flexibility in these hard times. Okay. Well, I guess it is good to be flexible. However, it is hard to get anything accomplished with the chaos!

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