Snow days have forever been adored by students. They are the gleaming surprise and exciting news of a student’s morning or evening, the rare chance to escape from the regular. The vitality from snow days was there long before the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, I consider the suggestion that students should attend online classes during snow days, something that was never required pre-COVID, unnecessary and extreme.
Prior to the global pandemic, snow days were always acknowledged as a day granted by luck and a simple rest from school, a chance for students of all ages to have a free day to spend with their friends and families and enjoy the many opportunities winter gives us to celebrate life and have fun. The proposition to steal that from students and replace a special day or series of them with online lessons squashes the true meaning of a snow day : a charmed and natural break, a halt from the tedium of the classroom.
While remote learning may have been essential during COVID-19, it would be unreasonable to make it the “new normal” during snow days now that we have returned to pre-COVID.
Students have no control over the weather and are not intentionally choosing to miss school, so why should they be forced onto their laptops to complete online work like they did during the pandemic? There’s no thorough reason for this shift, especially since most students would finish their online workload in less than a few hours, defeating the purpose of any remote learning taking place at all.
In my personal experience, remote learning was ineffective compared to in-person instruction. The inability to collaborate with fellow students creates a fog between understanding the material and being engaged at school. I couldn’t comprehend ever bringing that back into students’ lives, even if it means missing a few days.
Snow days, being a major component of the school year in areas with heavy snowfall, offer an occasional and spontaneous break from school and evoke a sense of specialness that allows students to be carefree for a day. Imagine a generation of students who never will get to experience an authentic snow day? If more schools begin replacing these particular days with online learning, students’ unprompted opportunities for joy and rest will be overlooked. Keeping true snow days flourishes a student’s sense of wonder.
