The Blue Valley School District has had five snow days since the start of the new semester and teachers have been catching up ever since.
English teacher Shelley Moran said that the change in pace caused by the snow days prevented her from having a strong start to the second semester.
“[The snow days affected my planning] a lot because our schedule was constantly changing and because we couldn’t get anything accomplished when we weren’t here,” Moran said. “It was difficult to have any momentum.”
Even on a regular schedule, English teacher Maria Worthington doesn’t get an adequate amount of time during the day to plan for her classes.
“I spend lots of my free time [on planning classes],” Worthington said. “I don’t feel like I have enough time. We get an hour plan typically, on block days it’s a little longer.”
With an already limited amount of time to plan, teachers are also faced with frequent and last-minute schedule changes. The effects of this have played out throughout the semester.
“I haven’t done nearly as much as I have in the past [this quarter], third quarter, because of snow days, is typically this way but this year more so than ever before,” Moran said.
Doing online classes rather than having traditional snow days could help students and teachers stay on track during the winter months, however, neither Worthington nor Moran want to give up traditional snow days.
“I would prefer just having an old-fashioned snow day. There are too many issues with the reliability of the internet, and if we were set up and it was routine, that would be one thing, but I think there are just too many issues that could happen,” Worthington said. “It might be an equity issue also if students don’t have access in certain cases, so I think the good old snow day is fine and if we have to, we can make up the minutes.”
Moran had a similar view on the idea of online snow days.
“I would rather not do online school because I still have PTSD from COVID on online school, and I don’t ever want to do it again,” Moran said.
Currently, the Blue Valley School District still has traditional snow days. This means teachers will continue to plan for unexpected days off and rescheduleing their week.
“Planning for snow days, I think it’s not any different than having to plan for the week,” Worthington said. “Most teachers, by nature, are flexible enough to switch their plans because we do that on a daily basis to help students learn, so I think we’re probably well equipped.”
