The news started spreading near the end of last week. We were going to experience record temperature lows which may cause us to cancel school on Wednesday, and possibly Thursday. Let me be clear, this wasn’t a snow day, this was a cancellation due to temperature.
There are various concerns when it comes to the temperature being too low. Children walking to school and waiting at bus stops are not safe when the temperature is too low. The concern I heard the most of administrators is concern of what would happen if there was a fire. We instruct our students when there is a fire to leave the building without coats. Having sixty five-year-olds outside without coats is a rough proposition.
Monday came, and it snowed, a lot. The snow didn’t stop until mid-morning which meant that the streets were not cleared. It took Diana almost an hour to drop Ollie off at school, which is usually a 10 minute journey, and my 30 minute to 40 minutes morning ride took almost an hour and a half. Add on to the fact that I had to get up early to shovel our drive and clear off our cars (which didn’t even look like I did this work an hour later when Diana headed out).
The possibility of Wednesday being cancelled was hanging over our head the entire day. Then at the end of the day we got the news that we would not have school on Wednesday. In that message we found out that decisions about Thursday would happen on Tuesday.
Tuesday, the commute was much easier, even though it was colder. Teacher on Tuesday had the feeling of restlessness that kid bring with the coming of a weekend, except for the fact that it was Tuesday. Then we found out on Tuesday that Thursday was cancelled. An hour before that I got word that my son’s school was closed on Wednesday and Thursday, so I had a portion of time when I had no idea how we would handle Thursday.
Wednesday and Thursday, I was home, taking care of my boys as Diana worked from home. There were teachers and administrators working, and some were taking days off. I got to some emails at the end of each day but in general the emails were pretty slow.
My car didn’t start Friday morning. We couldn’t get it started, so I ended up getting to school much later than I expected. This meant that my first class, 8th grade music started without me having fully prepped the class. It wasn’t a disaster, but it could have gone better.
3rd graders were okay, but had clearly just had two days off, heading right into a weekend. So, I decided to not teach anything new. We did some review and fun activities. I can’t blame them if they aren’t in the mind-set to learn. After the morning I had just experienced, I had still wasn’t feeling “normal.”
This week was weird. It was really hard to stay focused and in the moment. Concerns over taking care of my own life and family creeped into my time at school more than usual. It was a hard week for many reasons, but it had some nice moment. It was wonderful to spend time with my children in the middle of the week and through it all, while teaching wasn't my best this week, we made it work.
No comments:
Post a Comment