You wake up Monday morning feeling…off.You’re congested,your throat feels sore, and you have that “sick” feeling. But you have a lab in chemistry today, so what are you going to do? You can’t miss that. So you decide to just suck it up and go to school anyway. This is, unfortunately, not uncommon.
Students often feel the need to attend school when they’re sick due to the fear of missing too much school and getting behind on work. This is a product of the weight of parent expectations and teachers who can sometimes make assignments seem like a matter of life or death. These things create an unnecessary fear of missing school, even for valid reasons.
Students should never have to choose between school and their own well-being. They should never feel pressured to attend school when they know that they’re sick and have to delay the healing process in the name of their grades. This type of behavior is just going to lead to bad habits later on in life and will never teach students how to take care of themselves. In order to break this cycle, parents, teachers, and the school district itself need to focus more on looking out for their student’s well-being. This includes teaching them how to deal and cope in the real world rather than on stressing them out about projects and assignments that won’t end up meaning much in the long run.
Breaking this cycle is also important because when students come to school sick, they’re not only damaging their own health, but the health of others around them. When someone comes to school sick, they are exposing all the students and teachers around them to the illness as well. This could result in more people getting sick, creating an even bigger problem than there was before.
Students also have a responsibility to take good care of themselves so that they have a smaller chance of getting sick. Unhealthy eating habits, lack of sleep, and high levels of stress are all catalysts for getting sick. However, sometimes sickness is unavoidable and students shouldn’t be punished for a natural problem of life. There may not be a perfect solution, but there is definitely more that can be done to prevent students coming to school when sick.