When I was in high school, I remember having a few snow days every year.  They would be spread out and were always a pleasant surprise.  However, I never had a snow week until I moved to Baltimore.  In case you didn’t see it on the news, we got hit with 2 blizzards in the same week.  Each one gave us 20-30 inches of snow, bringing our total for the season up to over 80 inches!  At first, the time off was very relaxing and enjoyable.  But cabin fever soon set in after a few days of being stuck in the house without a way to escape.  Luckily, my neighborhood has a lot of bars/restaurants that stayed open so we could occupy our time at night.

As you can probably imagine, this led to a multitude of problems in school.  Before these storms, my students were about 2 weeks behind schedule due to the other snowstorm we had in December.  We missed the three days before winter break where I was going to end my homeostasis unit, but had to spend an entire week reviewing before the test.  Now, my students are 4 weeks behind schedule which means we may not get through the entire curriculum as well as I hoped.  They need all the EXTRA time they can get; not less!

Besides the scheduling issues, behavior has been atrocious.  We only had three shortened days this week and not only did the students forget most of what they learned before the blizzards but they also forgot how to behave (well, some of them never knew in the first place).  Also, think about how you feel when you have a big break and get back to work- no one wants to do anything!  So on top of dealing with obnoxious behavior outbursts, I am dealing with completely apathetic students who just want to sleep in again.

This week will be the first full week I’ve taught since December (assuming we don’t get snow days this week)!  I can’t believe it and am sort of dreading it.  But my students definitely need to get back into gear- we have less than 3 months until the High School Assessment!  Wish us luck as we push forward!