Winter has certainly arrived in full force with extreme cold, a decent sized snowstorm, and enough wind to last for the next several weeks. Thankfully we at least missed some of the weather—which occurred during the holiday break—in terms of school but we still have a distance to go before we see spring. To date, we’ve missed three days of school with two of those days being ‘blizzard bag’ days where work was provided to students in order to have that day count as a school day.
We continue to get questions about blizzard bag days and have noticed a number of other districts have implemented the idea in various permutations. To recap briefly, blizzard bags are classroom/teacher driven assignments that either relate to what’s happening at that time in the curriculum or is part of a longer-term project that’s tied to the curriculum but not necessarily what is being covered in the classroom at that time. Assignments are designed to be similar in difficulty to other class activities and must be completed completely as they count for both a class grade and as an attendance day. Students have five days after the assignment is given to complete the work, essentially meaning that they always have a weekend in which to do the work. Assignments vary between grade levels and content area and are made available in hardcopy (and often electronically) for students. Assignments, whenever possible, are provided prior to the cancellation of school.
Blizzard bag days will not be invoked back-to –back; therefore, last week’s cancellation of school on both Thursday and Friday means that only Thursday was a blizzard bag day while Friday’s cancellation will have to be made up in June. The district also doesn’t assign blizzard bags during midyear examinations and aims to avoid more than two blizzard bag assignments in any given week. Teachers have improved the instructions for blizzard bag assignments since the first implementation over a year ago. Teachers also monitor emails or other electronic communication methods (this depends on what they are using in individual classrooms) during the snow day in case students have questions about the assignments. Teachers have also provided additional support and assistance over the five days that students have to complete the assignments. Hopefully, the use of blizzard bags this year will provide ongoing education for our students as well as requiring fewer days be made up at the end of June (last year we had eight school cancellations and had to add three days to the end of school in June).
We’re all aware that it’s not unusual to have 6 to 8 cancellations per year, in addition to late starts and early releases (of which we’ve had one each at this writing). In fact, as I write this column the weather forecasts are already talking of another impending snowstorm for next week so I anticipate some more disruptions of the school week as we move forward.
Hopefully everyone managed to make it through this last storm and cold snap without significant problems. While it’s certainly nice to have four seasons (five if you count mud season) here in New England, I’ve heard a number of people who wish this winter didn’t have to be quite so cold, and I can’t say I disagree with that sentiment. Also kudos to our highway crews for their work at keeping our roads open during these difficult winter weather conditions.
