By: Seth Crawford
January 23, 2024
A student suffering from sickness at home, staring at his computer screen, at all of the piled up work he has to do in pure shock.
Beginning in the entirety of December stretching into the present, there has been a spike of illnesses in residents of Philadelphia. However, at Carver E&S, all types of illnesses have affected our attendance considerably. Since last school year, our overall absences have dropped and our attendance has improved, which is more prominent during these times of widespread sickness.
“Probably just all in the last month, like every single day”, said Curtis Kelly, a student from our school after being asked when he was sick.
According to the tracked attendance of every absence and lateness ranging from the beginning of last school year to the present, our school is quite a special case in this precedent. Using the sample size of December 1-22 of 2022, the average amount of absences (median) is 121. Using the sample size of December 1-22 of 2023 on the other hand, the average amount of absences is 66. Roughly 15% of all absences are due to ilness, so these numbers are, in reality roughly 18.15 and 9.9 respectively.
“Well when I was at home for my sickness, I decided not to come to school because I didn’t want to spread it to others to put them in the situation I was in.”, said Josiah Thomas, who was sick last school year, where there was a higher rise than this school year.
But the question that strikes is, what does all of this data have to do with Carver? To put it simply, when students our visually present in a class, they are to learn more than students that are suffering from illness at home, not immediately prioritizing what's going on at school. In certain cases, where you have more work or studying to do for one class than another, the sick student can create their own schedule for themselves at home, as where if they were at school, they couldn't have unscheduled time to do work in specific time frame, due to the school's set schedule.
“I missed a lesson, and then a test in Mr. Lick’s class and I had to do it on another day. The extra time I had to study because I was sick the Thursday and Friday before the weekend helped me pass it.”, said Ike Bermeo, a student from our school. “I feel like it helped me study more and realize that even if I’m sick for a day, it doesn't mean I don’t still have to do my work and stuff. I think I can do work while sick, unless it’s like really bad."
This can make missing school days to prioritize certain work with your own scedule beneficial, but there are many downsides to not being at school. Teachers don't only give out work, but they have to teach, so the student can know how to complete the work. When you're sick, not at school, not only are you not learning, but your sickness can often make you completely oblivious to what happens at school. With all of these different classes, there are many possible things you can miss, while absent.
“Honestly, when I was sick, I thought it was like a few free days off from school, but you know, I got back round January 10th, 11th. I got sick right after Christmas. So when I got back I back, I thought, you know, they were gonna excuse me for all the work but they didn’t, and I had all this work piles up, and on top of that one of my teachers still expected me to finish a project, which I hadn’t done while I was sick over break. My entire grade was screwed up so getting back on track was incredibly difficult.”, said Timothy Joyce, a student from our school, explaining his experience coming back to piled up work after recovering from his sickness last school year.
Moving away from the effect of attendance educationally, looking at the data, we have improved as a school with absences in general, but specifically these high cases of respiratory illnesses. It's not very easy to name what actions we've taken to dampen any sort of sickness spike at out school, but the fact is that we have. One of the main respiratory illnesses, COVID's cases have dropped from the past, so this decrease could be leading the charge for the attendance improving.
“In the cafeteria and the school in general, people are cleaning up everyday, plus covid had become less frequent than last year.”, said Josiah Thomas, when asked how we are doing a better job at handling this annual rise in sickness.
The annual sickness spike in America, has not much affected our school's attendance, which we can see how being present in school in contrast of being sick at home, is benefiting us daily.
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