On any given day in schools across the territory, up to a third of teachers call in sick.
The first step for school leaders is to ring up any available relief staff - a somewhat rare resource - before shuffling teachers with free periods and school leadership into the classroom to cover for their colleagues.
The next step is to split classes up and distribute students to other classes. If there are too many students to make that work, then classes are combined together and activities modified so the classroom teacher can cope with the larger cohort.
Finally, when there's absolutely no way to make face-to-face teaching work, students are sent home to work remotely. Between five and 10 per cent of ACT public schools have had at least one class working at home since the start of Term 2.
Far from the "return to normal" that teachers and families were optimistically hoping for at the start of this year, this school year has been a stop-start affair and complex, long-term issues are beginning to rise to the surface.
Disruptions continue
University of Canberra Assistant Professor of teacher education Bernard Brown says educators usually had a unit of work planned for the whole term or semester. Now they need to consider what to do in case they were sick and had to hand over to a relief teacher or deliver online with little notice.
"I would say most teachers now probably have a few weeks of resources and materials that they have in some some state of preparation. Some probably have it more well organised than others," Dr Brown says.
"But also what we have is collaboration too, so that ... teachers will work together a lot more to share these resources and do some shared planning."
Planning for remote delivery becomes even more challenging for practical subjects, such as art, music and physical education, but schools are at least familiar with online teaching.
When students come back to school after a period of remote learning, there's a period of catch up. Even when students are not in remote learning, they face uncertainty from one day to the next, Dr Brown says.
"I have a daughter in year 12 and she's told me that every day she never quite knows whether a teacher will be there or what will happen. Sometimes there's no relief teacher ... Sometimes there's online resources left for them. Sometimes they're put in with other groups of students ... sometimes they go to Google Classroom and access resources that way.
"So it's always somewhat unpredictable week to week how the teaching will be done even when the school is still open."
Tale of two Canberras
After two-and-a-half years of disrupted education, the cracks are beginning to show. But the effects are not being felt equally.
ACT Principals Association co-president and Harrison School executive principal Andy Mison has noticed that some students are falling behind.
"There's no doubt there's been a disruption to our kids learning and probably somewhat to their social [and] emotional development," Mr Mison says.
"We are seeing that play out particularly amongst more disadvantaged families."
Those more likely to be feeling the negative impacts have English as additional language or dialect, including refugees and newly arrived migrants. Many families are under financial stress after losing work during the pandemic.
The younger students aged four, five and six have also had their critical development years disrupted.
"I think we are seeing it manifest in some behaviours with kids with absolutely high levels of anxiety ... some behavioural regulation challenges," Mr Mison says.
"All of it is normal child behaviour, but some of it is concerning. On the other hand, [a] lot of kids absolutely are demonstrating extraordinary levels of resilience, courage and fortitude. And probably over the longer term, many of these students will be better for some of this challenge because they'll have learned from it and be better equipped to deal with things."
Dr Brown agrees there is a risk that disadvantaged students will fall behind in their development, partly compounded by lack of support and motivation during periods of remote learning.
"There is an assumption that anyone that's under about 20 is a sort of technological wizard or something, but it's not always [the case].
"The use of social media and the use of technology for social engagement is somewhat different to the use of technology for educational purposes. And so that's where sometimes these sort of inequalities that already in place are more starkly highlighted."
Burning out
Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs says members are at exhaustion point and facing pressures greater than they ever have experienced.
"We're hearing that our workforce is under incredible strain. And yet our teachers want to do the very best for students and for the communities so they are managing to the best of their abilities, but this comes at some personal cost," she says.
"They're preparing for their lessons, but they're also preparing for: I wonder what class I will be on today? I wonder how many other students I will have to teach today? Just because of the high levels of staff absence means that classes are being being split with incredible regularity."
A nation-wide teacher shortage was brewing before the pandemic but it has been exacerbated by it, with the union hearing of teachers opting for earlier retirement or leaving at early stages of their career. ACT Education Directorate figures showed 337 teachers and school leaders leaving the system in 2020 and 2021.
Mr Mison worries we will snap back to business as usual without learning the lessons from the pandemic - that the health and education systems are the backbone to our society.
"I do worry about the future of the profession. Because teachers have ... over the last two years responded to every challenge thrown at them and we're still going," he says.
"It's just such a great job to work with young people and influence and help shape their futures. You get to work every day with people who care about other people, who have moral purpose at the core. That's wonderful."
A way forward
The principal believes there can be better integration of allied health with schools to support students who have been dealing with trauma since the black summer bushfires.
"It is probably time we had a conversation over the next few years about what the purpose of education is," he said.
"We should think about schools as a hub for the community ... How can we make it easier for families and schools to work together?"
In his office, he points to a sentence written on the whiteboard.
"Learning progress and wellbeing for our kids. We'll just keep our eyes on that and whatever happens, we'll just keep going."
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