Snow Days

Many school children in the Upper Midwest had their days made today due to school closings and the resulting snow days.  As a child, like many other kids, I lived for snow days and I still would be more than happy to have classes cancelled due to a heavy snow storm.  Some kids may be more excited just to simply miss school and may not even be happy for all the wondrous activities that the snow provides.  For me, missing school was never really a negative, but I think the best part about snow days was the fact that there was a large amount of fresh snow and this meant that skiing, sledding, snowball fighting, and snow fort building was sure to occur.  The recent snow days got me thinking about snow days and how they can relate to education.  For one, snow days present some logistical problems for teachers and schools. Perhaps more important and more interesting to think about as a future teacher is the fact that more students are excited about snow days (or missing school in general) than school itself.  Is this is a problem of current schools or is it just a natural thing that kids would rather not have to go to school and just play all day.  The latter is probably the more agreed upon explanation.  I would say it is not necessarily a problem of the schools but the better schools or schools that have more enthusiastic teachers and stimulating curriculums will have more engaged students that may be more likely to enjoy school.  Thus, the students at these schools may not be as excited to miss school for a snow day as students in other schools. As a teacher, a cool goal to have, may be to have your students more excited to go to school than to miss school on a school day.  I would love it if my students were more excited to come to school and learn than to have a day off to lounge around.  This is probably an unrealistic goal but it would be awesome and I am sure it would make teaching quite fun and less frustrating than it could be under other circumstances.  On the other hand, these snow days may be a good way to allow for kids to relax, get some exercise, and just be kids.  There are many positive things that could result from this extra time off.  As a science teacher, it would be fun to have the kids come into school and do a snow or winter related science experiment or just take a hike in a nearby nature park or woods.