The 2020-2021 school year has looked a lot different in several manners: no guests at sporting events, remote learning schedules, and now, for OPS, no snow days. For many students, snow days are the highlight of the school year. Thanks to the convenience of remote learning, snow days will not be the same for OPS this year and moving forward.
The rituals of hoping for a snow day have become a tradition for many students. When the forecast starts to predict winter weather, students sleep with spoons under their pillow, wear inside out pajama pants, and tweet at their superintendents. Now, all of this has been taken away.
Now, with access to one-to-one technology, it is easy for OPS students to learn virtually during snowfall. Before the pandemic, students did not have technology to take home, therefore there was no way to do school on snow days. However, now the district sees no reason for continuing snow days.
Although I am a senior, I am still sad to see snow days go for the generations to come. There will be no excitement when your parents wake you up at 6 in the morning, telling you school is cancelled. There will be no time to build a snowman with your friends or go sledding. There will be no unexpected days off that are used for refueling your energy.
Because of the challenges students have been presented with this year, the district believes it is more important than ever to maintain student engagement. However, when students have not had a regular day of learning since March of 2020, would one or two snow days really affect them all that much? Not to mention, classes are only 20 minutes long, making it hard for teachers to produce useful or meaningful lessons for that short of a class period. Essentially, these remote learning snow days have been used to take attendance in all classes and that is all.
Even though the school day for OPS kids is cut short on these remote snow days, students are still missing out on the traditions and joy of real snow days. Everything has been taken away from students since the pandemic has started, and snow days should not be one of them.