I grew up in the Midwest, so “snow days” loom large in my memory. It started with a curious feeling upon waking, that things were different. On mornings after a deep snow, everything was quiet and bright. Even before I opened my eyes I would sense it — a possible snow day!
My siblings and I would rush to the radio. Would they call our school? While we dutifully dressed and ate breakfast, someone listened at the radio. There were five of us, so silence was rare. But when we were listening for snow days, our home was silent. We had the misfortunate to live in a city that had a ready fleet of snowploughs. So we would listen, ever hopeful, to the names of schools out in small towns near ours. Finally, though we’d hoped and expected, it seemed unexpected! Our schools were on the list! Snow day!
Snow days were action packed. We dressed in our outdoor gear and sledded down the hill. Our neighbors came to sled with us — we had the only good sledhill in the neighborhood. We would get on a saucer (a new invention that was ever so much more exciting than the old sleds with runners) and slam down the hill, trying to run into the old oak tree on the way. We’d mark the longest anyone had gone, and try to beat the record.
Flash forward to coastal California, 2008, a Monday morning. Our son expects a snow day. On Friday, a child that lives next to his school even promised it! The weather report was promising: cold, rain, snow at low elevations. His school is at about 1500 feet. A snow day! What an exotic idea!
Alas, it didn’t happen. The call didn’t come. He says that by the time the bus got him up there, it was raining again. There had been snow, at least. A disappointment.
The funny thing is, my son likes school. In fact, he loves school. He goes there with a sense of anticipation. His teacher not only values every kid in his class; she knows them all. When she sent home his first evaluation, it pinned him exactly at his coordinates: good with math concepts but unwilling to do rote memorization, uncomfortable with unexpected changes in routine, a great sense of humor, loves to help other kids.
It’s amazing to me that she’s been able to do this in three months, but on the other hand, why should it be so amazing? Isn’t it what teachers are supposed to do? His teacher describes herself as “having a calling” to teaching. And it is the story of modern education (at least in California) that she’s at a private school. She has the ability to get to know all her students. She’s not being pressured to get them to answer a set of questions correctly. She’s been pressured — to make sure that they are happy, to make sure that they care about what they’re doing, to make sure that they’re learning at a pace that challenges them.
Something I have noticed recently is how important “project-based learning” is to my son’s growth. There is no sense that what he’s learning is from a set of things he is “supposed” to learn (though I’m sure that his teacher is keeping a close eye on “the standards” and making sure that her students achieve them). Instead, his teacher has led them on a quest to put together what they learn into something bigger. Right now, they are studying migration. They chose an animal that migrates and learned about that animal. Then they wrote a story from that animal’s point of view. Then they edited that story to be better, more vivid, more detailed. Now they are taking that story and learning to set text, and they’re creating pop-up books. It’s science, history, art, high tech, and everything else in life all bundled into something they can bring home and remember and cherish. He might show his grandchildren that book. I can imagine that.
This is what homeschoolers seem to be striving for as well. The funny thing is how many former (and current) homeschoolers I’ve met at his school. They’re looking for a way for their children to be really connected to what they’re learning. Many of them find that as their children get older they need more, and they look for a school that can give them what they need. They end up hauling their kids up the mountain…
…except on snow days. No matter how you love school (and I reluctantly loved school, though I had such a variety of teachers, some of whom cherished me and some of whom made fun of me in front of the whole class), a snow day is special. It’s a day when something unexpected and magical happens. You go to sleep in one world, and wake up in a quieter, more magical one. A conduit to the world of imagination is open for a short time…
…then we’re back to school as usual. But a snow day is special.
My son had to go to school that day. The snow melted. But the possibility is still there…
