Things I love about snow days: Sleeping in. FInally getting to cook that recipe that only takes 4 hours in the crock pot. Painting by numbers (yeah, I still do that). Catching up on Hulu and Netflix.
Things I hate about snow days: When all my teacher friends decide to wake me up with the “No School!” text. The panic that sets in when I realize I’m supposed to have a concert tomorrow and district assessment in two weeks (which is during the SOL window).
I think the positives outweigh the negatives. And if not, I can push my feelings away with girl scout cookies.
I love snow days and delays. I really do. I get to sleep in a little and get work done at home that I’ve been neglecting.
But all of this comes at an expense. Not only the expense of less teaching time, but the expense of my sanity.
Today was the first day after two snow days, a week end, and then a 2-hour delay. So the kids have essentially had an extra vacation this weekend. And I could tell by the way they behaved today.
It’s not like it was horrible. They were still the kids I’m used to, but so much more talkative. But that I can understand. They wanted to tell their friends (in person instead of via text) what they had done for the past 4 days. They were also just antsy. Like they had forgotten how to be in school.
So instead of fighting, I asked them questions to remind them of our classroom procedures. And it worked. After about 15 minutes, they had all asked the same questions and realized that I wasn’t going to cut them a whole lot of slack (organizationally) they fell back into their routine.
It was pretty much the same thing I did to myself when I walked in the office today. I had to remember how I had things organized and how I got things done. After my brief reminder tour, the day went pretty smoothly.
So I’m going to go pat myself on the back one more time before I move on to the rest of my work.
