Living in North Carolina, I understand that in the past weather rarely caused a school closing. Once when I first started (lo these 12 Winters ago!) we had a week off from an ice storm. I can remember trying to chop up the ice in my grandparent's gravel driveway just so I could get in and out more easily while checking on them. But that was considered an oddity back then, a freak occurrence. There was always the chance of a hurricane, but that was also not a yearly thing. The need for school systems to have built in weather days was small. I am not sure how it got to be that those days were non-existent, but that is the current situation, and has been my entire career.
The past three years have presented a strong argument for those weather days to be built back into the calendar for school systems, especially in the eastern part of our state. We have had anywhere from three to nine days of closed schools caused by winter weather during February of these years. One could make an argument for this being a trend in our weather patterns, perhaps a climatic change caused by global warming. Others could also successfully argue that these wintry weather days have simply been a fluke, or a part of regularly shifting patterns. Whatever you believe, one undeniable fact is that our calendar has zero wiggle room for finding days to use to make up the missed days. Taking teacher work days and making them regular student days is the first response of school system administration, and understandably so. State laws mandate a certain amount of contact time between teachers and students be offered (though with all the absences collecting in my roll book, it becomes apparent that some of these children will never take advantage of all that is being offered...but that is the topic of a future blog post). The only days our districts have to put the kids in front of teachers and make up for the missing time are those same days we need (yes, NEED!) to get all of our paper work caught up, all our grades finalized, staff development accomplished (parents do want us to continually improve our craft, don't they?) and, quite frankly, to improve our morale.
And what happens when the number of teacher work days is less than the number of days missed due to inclement weather? Well, tomorrow, Saturday, the 20th of February, that question gets answered as I and my fellow teachers, cafeteria workers, administrators, janitors, bus drivers, and Safety Resource Officers all converge on the school campus for a partial day (early-dismissal schedule) of school. Today in every class, and often more than once (because heaven forbid some of them actually pay attention to what is happening around them), I had students asking what I would be having them do tomorrow. When told they would be getting a regular (though brief due to the reduced schedule) lesson about science, they actually seemed to think it was appropriate to complain. To me. As if I somehow had control over the fact that there was school on Saturday. As if they had some right to expect an easy day because it was Saturday. Seems some of them thought a movie would be appropriate. There were also the usual displays of teenage bravado, those mavericks and rebels claiming with great pride how they would NOT be coming to school on a Saturday. Those who knew they were coming tried many arguments to convince me to give them a free day, such as pointing out how half of their fellow students would not be there (which is not as far from a normal day as you would think if you have not recently been employed in a school), or telling me how unfair it was to have them do anything mentally strenuous because, "it's SATURDAY!" Can't argue with logic like that, now can I?
Of course I will be giving a full lesson tomorrow; I am beginning nuclear radioactivity in Physical Science, and introducing tides and the phases of the Moon in Earth Science. It is a school day, and we already get precious few enough of those in a block schedule like ours, with semesters that last only 90 days (including days lost to testing, finals, etc.). There is no way that this day will be wasted. Those who are absent will simply have to do what everyone else does when they are absent: copy the notes from someone else, and maybe see me after school for some tutoring to catch them up. Whether you who are reading this blog post think that I am being unfair or completely fair is a topic that could be debated here, or on other forums, but I would like to propose that we instead concentrate on avoiding this debate all together in the future by referring back to something mentioned in the title of this post.
With North Carolina possibly reverting back to local control of school calendars, letting each school district decide when to start and end as opposed to legislating it from Raleigh, we could now have the opportunity to put those inclement weather days, or 'snow days' as we called them in my youth, back into the calendar. I would suggest three, spread out around the second semester, since most of our missed days have been during February. It is still possible to miss more than three days, but we have to start somewhere. These would not be official teacher work days (though you can bet your bottom dollar this teacher would be working at home, grading and planning like a fiend) wherein teachers are contractually obligated to come in to their place of employment and do something productive, but actual days where the school buildings are closed to everyone. If we had three snow days this year, there would be no need for us to lose our teacher work days, there would be no need for all those students to fall a day behind because they will not be in school tomorrow, and there would be no need for me to have to go to bed right now so that I can wake up early enough tomorrow to go to work. Good night blog land, and Blessed Be.
