Sniffles encompass the room, the coughs are now taken as a background noise, and the sleepy, dead-eyed students seem to populate the building. With the outside leaves rapidly changing, the students at St. Paul Academy and Summit School seemingly change with it, perhaps not in the best of ways.

With its pops of color and cooler temperatures autumn also brings viruses. The colder autumn air enables seasonal allergies from trees to come about, and they can be just as much of a burden as pollen is in the springtime. Since fall is a virus season, many people inevitably catch colds and viruses along with it.

It’s not difficult to see the amount of SPA students that have been swarming the halls while plagued with the flu or virus. What may not be visible, however, is how little students actually miss school due to their sickness.

Attending school while sick not only creates a dangerous cycle of contaminating the school which results in other students getting sick, it also decreases your productivity while in school since a sick student cannot fully engage in the same manner that a healthy student can. A culture has arisen revolving around the idea that going home and missing one or two days of school isn’t worth it because a student will fall too far behind with schoolwork.  

Essentially, students feel pressured to be in attendance at school when they are sick because the quizzes, tests, in-class notes and activities don’t benefit students in the same way when they aren’t present. What is ultimately very vicious about this mindset is that it fosters the unwillingness to be absent from school. When a student is far too sick to attend, this pressure only increases as students only think about the subjects they will miss, the classwork they will fall behind on, and not their health and well-being. Students are incapable of learning well when not practicing self-care.

Teachers at SPA do a wonderful job accommodating students with their specific needs; however, the expectation that students will complete their homework while ill exceeds a prospect that all students who are at home sick are able to complete assignments. Teachers can help students’ needs by making time to meet with them to ensure a student’s understanding of the missed material. Students at SPA must comprehend that above all, self-care is of the utmost importance when learning and that staying home to get better will actually be beneficial in the long-run.

A new culture revolving around the notion that students should feel okay with missing school when they need to due to illness will foster a healthier, less germ-ridden, and more balanced community.