Gateway’s first ‘snow day’ was Monday, December 12. This also marked the first use of our new “Blizzard Bags” that the district started working on last summer. The overall idea of Blizzard Bags is to create work for the students to complete within a week of a snow day, which will allow the district to count this as a day of attendance, thus not having to add days to the calendar at the end of the year. This is not a new idea and is explained much more fully on the Gateway website at http://www.grsd.org/Content2/blizzardbags.
However, as with all new items, there will be some kinks to work out as we implement the Blizzard Bags. As a friend noted, there is a Russian saying that the first pancakes are always lumpy but that doesn’t mean that the next pancakes won’t be better. We understand that there were some discrepancies in instituting our first Blizzard Bag between buildings and staff, which resulted in some students having all their work to bring home on Friday, and others having only part of the work expected to be completed for the snow day. In either case, staff will be making allowances for this by assigning tasks upon the return to school, providing longer than the standard 5 days to complete the work, helping students who need assistance, and scheduling make up time for those students who would have received additional supports mandated by their service plan on the missed day.
Given the amount of work our staff does on a regular basis to prepare lesson plans and activities for students and the delay in hearing about approval for the idea, it’s not surprising that not everyone was ready to go the first time the district had a cancellation due to weather. I do however give kudos to the elementary staff for their foresight and preparation over the last month for this eventuality once the school committee approved the blizzard bag concept. Given the varying types of assignments (you can view some of these under the school committee presentation from October 26th on blizzard bags) and differences in some assignments being part of a longer report while others are completed for that one cancellation, I’m sure staff will continue to modify their blizzard bag assignments for everyone as well as adjust specific items for individual students.
Part of this ‘pilot’ blizzard bag program will include collecting information from students, staff, and parents regarding how it works throughout the year. If you have specific items you’d like to share, please provide that information to any staff member or even email ‘[email protected]’ to provide it directly to district staff. While we know the idea has worked elsewhere in Massachusetts and throughout the country, we still need to see how it will work here and what we can improve both as we move through this year and in making decisions about how to move forward in the future.
I certainly hope that even with the additional work, our students and staff were able to enjoy their snow day.
