Hurricanes and Snow Days and Celery

I noticed a disturbing trend related to education in the news about how areas were preparing for Hurricane Laura. I am really concerned about it! Some schools that had in-person instruction chose to cancel in-person and online instruction for several days that would be affected by the weather. But some schools that had in-person instruction simply shifted to online instruction.

"To prepare for any potential impact to our area from Hurricane Laura, Montgomery ISD will transition to remote learning for all staff and students on Wednesday, August 26. Teachers and students will continue with their instructional plans on Wednesday but from their remote locations." This was announced Tuesday afternoon.

So this immediately made me think of snow days. Are we entering an age where when there's a snow day, teachers and students are expected to hop online for a day of distance learning? This is a case of shifts made due to an emergency situation becoming normalized. There were concerns that a permanent comfort with loss of privacy would happen after all of the security increases due to 9/11. This feels like the same permament slide... and it's a nationwide slither into seeing teaching as dissemination of information.

Teaching is NOT dissemination of information.

You cannot on Tuesday afternoon shift your lesson plan from in-person to remote for Wednesday without spending hours of work reconceptualizing the entire lesson. And public teachers are not paid adequately for their prep time to begin with.

Teaching is NOT like handing someone a package of celery. Here's how this goes with celery. I don't want to go to the grocery store for fear of catching COVID but I need celery. So I decide to order my groceries online and someone brings celery to my doorstep and voila! I have it in hand.

With celery, I can easily just switch to ordering it online and I get the same product in the end.

Teaching is the art of creating a series of experiences -- carefully designed to be high in student engagement -- which allow each unique individual child to have the "aha" moments to CREATE MEANING FOR THEMSELVES.

It is not an easy profession and it requires years of training. When you have a lesson plan designed for in-person instruction (which you have spent hours creating), you cannot simply administer the exact same lesson plan online. You have to reconceptualize the entire thing.

It is often said that teaching is an art, so let's take that analogy. Imagine that you have asked an artist to create a painting which shows Justice and it is for the county courthouse. The artist has spent months working out the themes of the painting. Would you ever announce on Tuesday afternoon that due to Hurricane Laura and the possibility of heavy rainstorms, the piece of art should be changed to a sculpture that shows Justice. And it's still due to be delivered on Wednesday morning as planned.

Of course not.

This is how our country is leaning towards treating teachers, and it's an unanticipated result of the pandemic. It was an unarticulated mindset before, and now it's being articulated and -- what's worse -- crystallized. Because we had a nationwide need to shift how teaching happened, it became clear what people think teaching is.

Which brings me to snow days.

I clearly see a winter coming where teachers are expected to get up on the morning of a snow day and simply teach their lessons online. People will say, why not? We already have made the investment in infastructure for distance learning. Why waste all that money? Even after the pandemic has ended, I think people will expect that snow days will be a thing of the past. It's in the calendar as a day of learning so it should stay a day of learning.

I am really concerned about this! With all of the talk of children being indoors all day, on screens all day, lethargic and obese... we are going to create a system that encourages them to stay inside on the screen even when something magical is happening outside? Snow is a chance for everyone to play. Even high school children play when it snows. It is a necessary mental health day... all the more healthful and joyful because you can't predict when it will happen. It truly is a day to wake up and say, cancel everything and let's go out in Nature. The hell with the lesson plans.

I'm a teacher and I know how much a snow day is an incredibly annoying disruption to my plan book. It throws off the whole carefully-built design of how the lessons will progress. From a curriculum planning point of view, I'm not a fan. But as a mom, and as someone who makes a profession out of being able to stand in the shoes of a child and see it from their side, and as a human being... why not set aside a day for nothing but playing outside and drinking hot chocolate? It's amazing. Snow is amazing. First there's nothing and then there's something floating in the air. It smells different, it tastes different, it sounds different. It is different from a normal day. It is magical.

And it's NOT a day to spend on Zoom.

I'm so lucky because, in the little school that I run, I created the option of in-school snow days. I tell parents that the kids can come if they want to and if the roads are safe to drive on. That way children come to school and enjoy the snow with each other. Snow is more fun with a group of your friends!

But back to the public school, which is where my worries lie.

It will be so damaging to the mental health of both children and teachers to tell them there will never be any unexpected joyful days off this year.

And it is so disrespectful to all of the education professionls in our country to tell them, get online and do your job. And the worst thing is, they'll do it. All teachers know what it's like to wake up sick and even though you feel awful (fever, vomiting, whatever it is), you have to take an hour and type up your lesson plans for the sub and email them to the school. Before you can go to bed and rest and heal. Teachers do what they need to do no matter what. And that means that they'll all be up until 2 am on the night when it might snow (or when a hurricane is coming), so that they have a second version of their lesson ready to go just in case. That's not healthy. And we shouldn't expect it of them. Teachers are professionals and they need to be respected.