How do I handle being called for jury duty as a Cambly tutor?

Dear Cambly,
Do you have any guidance regarding jury duty for US citizens? I have jury duty the week of Nov. 15th. I hate to cancel all my classes when I may, but more likely, may not be called in to serve. I won’t find out if I am serving until the previous day after 7 PM. This timeline will be too late to cancel 12 hours early, at least for my early morning students.

Signed, please don’t pick me!

Hi Please Don’t Pick Me,

Believe it or not, this happened to me when I was a young toucan. Ah, time flies, and so do I.

For anyone out there who is unfamiliar, U.S. citizens get picked for jury duty but don’t find out if they actually have to go until the night before. Talk about last minute! 

What I did was immediately tell all of my students the issue to prepare them. We actually had great discussions about the legal system in their countries, too! Just make sure that you communicate your call to jury duty with your students well in advance.

I only cancelled classes for the actual starting date of jury duty and told my students, “To be safe, I’m cancelling this specific day. If I don’t have to go, I’ll message you as soon as I find out, if you’d like!” That way, if you’re not chosen, you’ll have the rest of the week’s classes still in the system. 

Or, if you do have to cancel, it will be well within the 12 hour time window, and your students will be prepared for this situation. 

Of course, if you’d prefer to play it safe and take a few days off, you could do that too. The great thing about the flexible schedule is that you can make this work either way!

Best of luck, and we hope you don’t have to sit in that little room for 8 hours, waiting for your name to be called.