Job interview/Absence
Hi everybody,
Hope you're all doing well and looking forward to a well-deserved week off.
Looking for help with something. I've been absent from my primary school job for 3 weeks now after dislocating my kneecap (at school, in the class, children had to leave the classroom, waited for the ambulance for an hour on the floor with the head providing moral support, nightmare 😅) I will not be returning until after half term due to ongoing pain, swelling, poor mobility, etc.
My issue is that my fixed term contract is up this academic year and so I am applying for jobs elsewhere, and I have been invited to interview for this Friday at another school. It involves a panel interview and a 30 minute lesson - plus a "short written task". Now that day is a 'wellbeing' day off at my school so I wouldn't have to be in anyway, but I'm worried that it looks unprofessional to be off for 3+ weeks and then to rock up to interview the minute the holidays/time off begins at my current place of work in order to go to an interview at the other institution.
My argument would be that I can just about scrape through an interview and short lesson in the pain that I am currently in, with time off again afterwards to recover, but couldn't do that for a longer period or for consecutive days. However I still worry that it looks bad - I know headteachers can 'talk' (the schools are quite close together) and my head will probably get a reference request imminently - it said on the form that they would be contacted prior to interview, which surprised me as I thought they did this afterwards, but I might have been under a misconception all along!
In short: would you go to the interview, would you let your current head know what's going on just to be up front, or say nothing as technically its a day off and so I should be allowed to do whatever I want?
Thanks in advance anybody who gets to the bottom of this essay at this time!