Schools, we have a problem: We don’t know how to have an old-fashioned snow day anymore.
I remember as a kid staying up late watching the ticker on the bottom of the local news hoping that the next time the alphabetical list came around my school’s name would appear with one word after it: Canceled.
Snow days were rare in North Carolina where I grew up. More often, they were sleet days or freezing rain days. Not really that much fun to play in. But if school was canceled, school was canceled. No packets. No remote learning. Just me, my siblings, and a whole bunch of wet mittens, socks, and snow pants.
We always paid for snow days later in the school year with lost long-weekend holidays or added days before summer break. We all hated it. But that’s how it worked.
We have all sorts of euphemisms for snow days now: flexible instruction day, remote learning day, or instructions to “activate remote learning.” Dear reader, I regret to inform you: they are not the same.
The quaint snow day has gotten a modern facelift with screens, packets, and do-at-home lesson plans. Snow or no snow, we can now plow forward with learning regardless! And bonus: No lost holidays, no added school days later. Win-win.
Well, there is one loser: the parent at home struggling to power up devices, manage busywork, and tell their children who want to build a snow fort that they have to log into google classroom sessions instead. Oh, and the teacher—who would prefer not to have to manage a bunch of kids remotely on their day off. Oh, and the kids—who just want to play outside and catch up on sleep.
Friends, we don’t know how to do snow days anymore. Which has lead to a second problem: We don’t know how to go to school anymore.
This was the pinch-point before: snow days weren’t school days. That pinch has been removed: Snow days are school days when we make learning flexible and remote.
Now for the full circle moment: More and more school days are becoming snow days. We are seeing flexible learning days for an increasing number of reasons. Out of an abundance of caution, we simply can’t resist not coming to school!
This is the point: When we forget how to have snow days, we forget how to have school days. Having forgotten how to be fully absent, we are losing our ability to be fully present.
The problem is actually more foundational than we realize. As adults, we are used to work plaguing us everywhere we go, following us on our devices, beeping at us on the weekends, and haunting the dark corners of our bedrooms.
But kids used to know the delineation between work and rest until quite recently. Work happened at school. Rest happened at home. Snow days were firmly in the “rest” category.
When we let work and rest bleed together, we are never fully resting and we are never fully working. Adults in the room: These are our own bad habits. Are we sure we want to pass them down to the next generation?
Moreover, by cheapening the value of a snow day, we’ve accidentally cheapened the value of a school day. Location actually does affect learning, and it isn’t as flexible as we’d all like to pretend. Here’s my prediction: a few decades from now, we will find that the schools that succeeded the most were the ones that actually went to school.
Snow Day Bake
Let’s say you actually did get a traditional snow day. What might be a fun, easy snow-day bake that you can make from the ingredients in your pantry? Something that goes well with coffee in the afternoon? Something that is so easy even the second grader in your house could do it? How about some brown sugar shortbread cookies? I usually dip these in chocolate and top with pecans, but it’s a snow day! Eat ‘em plain!
Ingredients
3 sticks butter, softened
1 c brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
3 c flour
Make It
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Beat the butter, sugar, and vanilla in a stand mixer until creamed. Add salt and flour. Beat until uniform.
Use a tablespoon disher to portion out the cookies onto a parchment-lined tray. Use your hands to roll each ball into an oblong finger and set an inch apart in rows.
Bake for 15-17 minutes until edges are light brown. Leave to cool for 10 minutes. Enjoy!
