Sick Kids - #100DayProject - Day 093

I've been helping my parents care for my sick special needs aunt this evening and it made me realize how lucky I am. Even though my lovely wife has been ill for the last couple of days and my son started feeling sick today too, neither of them have thrown up. I am not the type of person who can handle vomit without feeling queasy myself and often end up in the same position. Yuck! I don't do other people sick very well if I have to clean up after them.

Image Source: Pixabay.com

Then I started thinking about my classroom and how I handle sickness at school. I am one of those teachers who would rather not have the student if possible and have been known to send kids home only to have parents later email and ask why they were sent home. My philosophy is better safe than sorry when it comes to illness, especially when it's at school, one of the germiest places on Earth.

But even more than sending kids home, I rarely send home missed work as they leave. I figure if they're sick enough to go home they should be resting and not stressing missed work. Besides, they can always make it up when they get back. I've even had to tell parents to chill and not worry about the work because they're worried the student will fall too far behind after missing part of one day. However, if they've been out for a couple days and seem to be on the mend, I will often send the work home at that point so they can start to ease back into intellectual work before returning to school.

I'm curious about how everyone else handles sickness and missed work. Do you send it home with someone that same day or do like I do and wait until they return? Do you even have the student make up the missing work or just excuse them and move on? I'm assuming responses will vary based on the level of teaching with Secondary more likely to request missed work be made up, but then again, I ask for it and I teach Elementary. So help me out and let me know via the comments or Twitter - @lars3eb.