Snow & Snow Days

Mother Nature held out on me for two whole years in the snow day department. One of the perks of being a Maryland teacher (especially a north-central Maryland teacher) is the snow day: We don't get enough snow around here to actually be able to cope with it, but we do get enough to shut down schools at least a few times each winter. Well, my first two years teaching and one snow day--pathetic! This year, though, it has all caught up with me: We've had three snow days prior to today already. Today, we had a major winter storm. Another snow day. And ... Baltimore County has already announced schools are closed for tomorrow! \0/

The funny thing is that today was a professional development day ... or was supposed to be, but our director went through the onerous process with the Department of Ed to have our calendar changed to have the students come to school so that we could make up one of the three snow days we've had so far this year. And it ended up being another snow day.

She likes to try to make the rest of us down on snow days because the school loses money, since it can't bill that day for students who are discharged before the snow day is made up. She likes to put the specter of making up the snow days during our summer break in front of us. Hogwash. The students get an extra week off than we do, and they make up the snow days from that (and professional development days). Honestly, I'd rather have the students in school for those days; if they left us the hell alone on professional development days, I might mind, but they overschedule us with training and meetings, and I get less done planning-wise than if the kids were there.

In the meantime, I've gotten a ton done. I was off on Friday because of my eye, had the weekend, Monday was a holiday (Martin Luther King Day), and now two snow days. It's like a second Christmas break. I'm not complaining. I got caught up on various things that I'd been putting off for a while.