It’s not all the white powdery stuff of legend around here.  Most of it is intermittent pellets of ice and gusts of wind.  Not the snow of my nostalgic youth, of snowball fights, snow cream, sledding down the hill at the Boys Club.  No, as an adult, it’s about lounging in my Pajamas, making a late breakfast on a Sunday morning and writing diatribes that virtually no one reads.

 

But amidst this blank canvas of white emerges a clarion call to win one for nostalgia, to plant one’s mark firmly for tradition.  With all the changes brought by COVID, the ability and knowledge to perform online teaching is one that threatens to undo one of the happier memories of my childhood–The Snow Day.

 

The Snow Day is something secretly hoped for by teachers and students alike.  Against the faceless machinations of the school calendar–barreling, unrelenting, ever churning–the snow day mutes the din of the machine, renders it inoperable, allowing us a day to revel in a blessed space in the ever encroaching tentacles of the school day, the overscheduled school day, to seep one inch further into the space of our conscious blank slate.  For if school consistently teaches or imposes anything on our common experience, it is the attempt at order in the ever fluctuating universe: days, hours, minutes, are ordered in blocks; bodies are ordered in space and movement; imaginations are ordered into socially acceptable vectors.

 

But the snow storm puts this on pause.  It allows an unanticipated waking morning of disruption.  It gives us the space to lolligag between dreams and waking just a bit longer before the agenda of tasks begins.  Whether we frolic in the flakes or laze in a flannel and hoodie, sipping tea and crafting prose, the snow storm swipes the natural paw of chaos back at the ordered entreaties of our organized system of schooling.

 

Technology–as it always has–finds a solution, another way for humankind to strike back at the chaos of the universe, to reconfigure it in our own image, often forgetting how myopic our vision can be.  COVID has taught us that we can do some form of instruction, and now there will always be the talk of switching snow days to days of remote instruction.  And as the possibility that Tuesday could see the weather keep us out of the building, it seems important to discuss if we should undertake this endeavor, or let the Snow Day be.

 

While this will certainly fall on deaf ears for those who think something immeasurable lost in the last two years can somehow be regained by pushing the nose of our overworked students even closer to the grindstone on one random day in January, the Snow Day will not be abandoned in this house, and should be kept sacrosanct.  Let us consider the following reasons.

 

  1. Forgiveness and the Middle Man:  Throughout Online School, it became abundantly clear that some measure of grade forgiveness was necessary for students, as mitigating circumstances outside the walls of school meant we couldn’t hold them fully responsible for work they couldn’t do.  We can cut out the middle man, and not assign the work, meaning no one has to chase their tails for things that ultimately won’t matter.

 

  1. The need for brain breaks and the rigidity of the schedule:  Most respectable brain science shows that the brain works best in cycles of work and rest.  No school schedule actually allows for that because idle time often leads to disruption that can cause more problems in the physical space of school.  But it is in these open, unplanned spaces where the mind can grow the most.  

 

To be honest, I think we should take this one step further and consider calling off schools on Sunny Wednesdays in March, you know, when it rains on the weekend, but just in the middle of the week we get a really nice day, but because of school schedules, we have to stay inside?  And then it rains the next weekend, too?  But at least at this point, I’m not giving up a weather-induced pause to build lessons that no one will do, or will do under duress, no doubt grumbling under their breath.

 

  1. Climate Change: If the mass of respectable climate scientists are to be believed (and they are), these events will become less and less frequent, and over time, fewer and fewer children will experience this anomaly of nature.  Truthfully, one of my favorite gifts of climate change is the Southern Phenomenon of the “Sunny Day Snow Day”, where the morning starts with just enough ice on the rural roads to have to call it for the whole system only to have it be mid-50’s by noon, and I’m taking for Juno for a run, listening to the bloated creek take the melting snow away with sun on my face.  But I digress.  Students should experience this ephemeral joy so they can tell their grandkids about something they will rarely, if ever, get to experience.

 

  1. The Make-Up Days: One of the awful side effects of the snow day is the calendar contraction.  Teachers get a couple of workdays sprinkled in between January and Spring break, to do things like grading papers or planning with their colleagues, time for us that has been increasingly compromised with the ubiquitous staff shortages.  The usual effect of snow days is that those precious workdays disappear to make up for lost seat time.  No time to take those breaths, no spaces to assess or reflect our practice and make necessary changes, just a mass headlong rush of panic, angst, and stress into Spring Break, after which, all minds work at half capacity.  

 

There is no guarantee that even if I plan a lesson and check students in on a snow day that we all still won’t have to come into school on those workdays anyway.  Without that guarantee, that’s extra work for teachers and students.  Nope and nope.

 

  1. Empty Space allows the mind to wander, the mind to wonder, unfettered by the corralling of the attention into the prescribed spaces we have created.  Is it good for students to learn to read and write and do math? Of course, but it is also good for them to be curious about the world or find something that brings them happiness, even if that is binging video games and eating perogies and ramen all day long.  School labors under the delusion that always doing something, always having something planned is necessary for a good and flourishing life.  Snow Days remind us that the pauses in between the work, the rests in between the notes,are sometimes the sweetest parts, to be savored and relished, to be nurtured and encouraged as the space where we are most alive, most able to connect with others, most able to know ourselves.

 

The white blanket outside has grown amidst these musings.  All those things I rank as tasks to complete seem to disappear underneath the haze.  There is no need to structure this time or these arguments any longer.  The tea cup is empty, so back into the kitchen and wherever that path takes me from here.  On these blank canvas days, what is time?  What is an agenda?  Nothing in the space of silent beauty, sitting softly in my mind, sitting frigidly in my backyard.