I teach middle school. I was out of work 5 days (half day Thurs for pre-op then surgery Fri and out M/T/W back to work the following Thurs). When I went back on Thurs/Fri I was really tired at the end of the day, but no pain - more like a soreness. I never really felt constant pain after the surgery - just a sore feeling. I did have some "zingers" as the nerves fired back up that last for seconds and then went away. With middle school kids, I was able to ask them to lift a few boxes off tables/shelves that I needed to get things from. My coworkers were very supportive also. When I had to write on the board, I used only the bottom half - keeping my elbow down by my ribs rather then raising my arm up to write higher. For that first 2 days back, I made sure my lesson plans included student driven activities that would not require me to be doing a lot of arm work. I had them working on a chrome book project assignment that I could monitor and offer advice. With middle school, I have 4 different blocks of students, so I did not have the same students all day. I could just repeat the activity for each block. Maybe you could schedule a class visitor to come talk about some thing from your curriculum. Or the kids could work on a project (poster/written) and then have each one come up and tell the class about it.

The recovery was pretty easy. I think I only needed pain medication for a couple days and then felt relatively back to normal. I was out just 3 weeks with my initial exchange surgery but every surgeon is different. I recently had my implants replaced and had to be out of work 6 weeks