Today was our second snow day within the last week. Since I work at a school that can only be reached by bus, this translates into a day without classes. There are some nice things about these random winter breaks, one being the opportunity to chat with my colleagues about those things that we’ve been meaning to find more than a few minutes to discuss.
But one of the challenges of snow days is adjusting my plans. I tend to sketch out the entire semester and its due dates before we even start. One reason for doing so is that it just helps me keep on track, else I might end up with only three days to study Hamlet. (And that would be a real tragedy!) I’m willing to flex my plans according to student interest and ability, and usually a snow day can be worked around. Two snow days are harder.
The other reason for my semester-long planning is that then I am able to book days in the computer lab at relevant points in the course. The labs are in high demand in our school and I can be certain that once the semester has started, I’ll need to book weeks in advance if I hope to get my students online. Snow days seem to land on days that I had booked for the lab, and I find it difficult to make my plans work around that lost day. I can’t expect to get students into the lab until my next booked date the following week. So do I put off the assignment we were going to do today until then, even though it was designed to precede our next phase of study? Do I skip the assignment and hope that I can cover the ideas in another way?
I think it’s easy to get caught up in the conversations about Web 2.0 and multiliteracies in education, and forget about the real limitations that prevent so many students from participating online. Classrooms without internet access. Over-booked computer labs. No computer or internet access at home. Snow days.
