WOODBURY — Waking up in the morning and looking out your window and seeing a sheet of white snow is something any high schooler wants to see. Because what goes hand and hand with snow? No school.
But do teachers feel the same way students feel?
“It’s just a fun surprise to not have to get up early and go to work,” says Nonnewaug English teacher Kelly Nichols. “I love teaching, but it’s fun to have an unplanned day off.”
Nonnewaug finance teacher Adam Lengyel agrees with Nichols.
“Snow days are great, especially when they are on a Monday or a Friday, because then you get a long weekend, so that makes it even better,” Lengyel said.
Even though Lengyel likes snow days, he feels that there are some downsides to them.
“The only downside to snow days is that we have to make it up in the summer when the weather is nice,” says Lengyel.
NHS science teacher Toby Denman also sees some downsides of the days off.
“It’s not easy with block days and stuff,” says Denman, who verbalized a situation when a snow day creates a gap in learning: “’Hey kids, remember this thing we did yesterday? Oh, no, it wasn’t yesterday; it was like four days ago.’ So that makes it difficult.”
But Denman also sees a lot of positives in snow days.
“I’m likely to be happy and celebrate the first snow day of the year,” says Denman. “On a Tuesday when we got a snow day, I spent nine or 10 hours planning AP Biology because the first time teaching that class is very time-involved, so I took that as an opportunity to get some work done. These are things that need to be taken into consideration.”
Many ask: How many snow days are too many?
Nonnewaug freshman Cameron Packett thinks a few is enough.
“Three to four is the max,” says Packett, “as too many can take away from the summer days. But I like snow days as it is a way to not be in school and to have fun with friends.”
Nichols and Lengyel agree with Packett.
“Three would be good,” Nichols said. “More than that would interrupt things.”
“Ideally it is nice to have two or three a year, and then that’s it,” Lengyel added. “You don’t want to have too many.”
Denman has a specific way he wished snow days would happen.
“In an ideal world, that first snow day of the year would happen in the week or two leading up to winter break,” says Denman. “If we don’t get one leading up to winter break, I would like it to happen in a week to 10 days after the return from winter break. If we have gotten to the point where we have had eight or more snow days, I am no longer a fan of snow days because I am a fan of summer.”
Most Chiefs agree that too many snow days can mess up plans.
“It definitely kind of screws things up, takes a little long, kind of drags out the winter and the transition from the first semester to the second semester,” says Lengyel. “The toughest thing for me is I do FBLA [Future Business Leaders of America] and we have our competition, so all of the competitions and the assignments and the tests and the things they have to turn in are now in November. It gets screwed up because of snow days and things like that. So there are outside activities where you have time restrictions where you have to get things done in a certain period of time, and that makes it difficult.”
Snow days also provide students and teachers with a free day to do anything they want.
“If it happens to be the first snow day of the year, there is a pretty good chance that I am going to be watching some television, which might involve SportsCenter multiple times,” says Denman, “before switching over to perhaps a marathon of Chicago PD or Law and Order SVU, or the occasional HGTV episode.”
Like Denman, Lengyel likes to spend time watching movies.
“We kinda of do some fun stuff like watch movies and hang out,” says Lengyel.
