How to deal with classes that I must cancel due to conference travel?
I do it like this:


Try to let a colleague* take over. This almost always works with 'standard' classes (intro to statistics, this kind of stuff)
Plan the classes in such a way that the students are busy with something else in this week (e.g., data collection), so that a plenary meeting is not necessary.
Cancel - but if I would cancel more than one meeting of a course, I would probably get problems with my department.


* we don't really have the concept of a TA here, you are either teaching (then, you are a colleague) or not - so 'colleague' also can include graduate students that might be referred to as TA in other systems

(context: Europe/Netherlands; social sciences)