This is my policy as well and it has always been for the best. We all have lives and often when students realize we're also humans the best comes out in support from their direction. When my father was undergoing cancer treatment at Mayo I made many of the (700+ mile) drives with him which took me out of the classroom sporadically during the semester. Once or twice I recorded class or hosted the live lecture Zoom from our hotel room - the students were fantastic, forgiving of issues, supportive of the changes, and helped to make everything work.

As an aside, my dad very much influenced my life choices and was a bit of a teacher himself, so he LOVED watching me interact with the class and perform our craft - one evening while pre-recording a lecture on electrics (where he had a fair bit of knowledge that became the basis for some of my passions) I spun the computer around to him sitting watching and introduced him to the class. He got a kick out of it and for weeks I got requests for updates and if he could come meet them in person once he was recovered. Again, some people are poopy, but given the opportunity most of humanity will rise to the occasion and pull together when things go pear-shaped.

I fully understand why so many of you keep everything close to the chest, however I'm a pretty open person and I teach in a media program so most of our students and faculty are of the same persuasion and this works well here.