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Cancel School! Play and the Snow Day


 January and February are some of the hardest teaching months of the year. Christmas is over and the weather is dark and cold. We are, as T. S. Eliot lamented in “Journey of the Magi,” “no longer at ease here, in the old dispensations.” A sixth-grade teacher once said to me, “Every February I want to quit.” I understand that more now than I did in my first few years of teaching, and I don’t think it’s true only for education. February is tough for everyone; the weather is cold, bleak, and unfriendly. Spring is distant. The spiritually heavy time off during Holy Week and the limited leisure of spring break might as well be the next millennium, and class feels much the same as early December without all the anticipation of Christmas. Yet, one thing can change all of that (if you live in a state where it is unusual and therefore still exciting): snow 

 In the modern age, snow days are more easily forecasted and (therefore) anticipated than ever. This has robbed them of some of their glory but not all. While snow is no less exciting, it is far more easily tracked. School districts and systems can cancel the night before, knowing that “they will get something,” and so they should go ahead and cancel so everyone can sleep in the next day. Furthermore, the local classical schools (or private schools) feel the pressure to follow suit with the local public county. After all, they cannot be more humane than us! 

 However, I want to argue against canceling the night before a possible snow day, regardless of the forecast. Many public counties cancel school in anticipation, indeed they have much to manage in bus runs and student logistics, so it is just easier for them to make the decision the night before. If schools are places that teach students to rejoice and play (as well as love wisdom) then they should think twice before canceling early. Imagine your Christmas tree with presents around the trunk with no wrapping. What is the fun in that? Anticipation, the unknown, is part of the delight. Classical schools should be full of delight. As a well-placed drama, waiting until the morning to cancel school should come with the territory of knowing good stories. Send a morning text message, and let families relax, rejoice, and be awake together, having anticipated a day apart. Let snow come like a late Christmas present, wrapped and to be opened “in the morning.” 

 I would like to argue that schools should cancel school, not try to squeeze an instructional day out of forlorn pupils, either by having school despite the hazards or attempting some form of learning at home. Remember what Chesterton said, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” Snow is only an inconvenience to a curmudgeonly teacher, one who struggles to have fun themselves. That teacher, who desperately wanted to get through a particular portion of the curriculum today and will not have to cram the rest of the week into two days, should go make a snow angel, for their own good. Schools that love good play, a good with an end in and of itself, should love snow days and encourage play. Maybe it was only dusting, but to a third grader, it is a winter wonderland of play. It is delighting in what God gives, even if in small handfuls. Schools should not be quick to cancel school before a single snowflake has fallen. They should recognize the good of play and join those third graders, bundled, in the snow, enjoying a day off in a bleak, cold part of the year, and delighting in the gift of the unusual, uncommon, and opportune.  

  A snow day brings with it both play and rest; it literally quits the world. The rest from a day at work comes with ice or snow whatever the accumulation. Snow brings play, and play is how we experiment with the ideal. Play (and playfulness) is aimed at the supreme good, having no other end in mind. Snow days cultivate in us, if we practice them rightly, a child-like pleasure that teachers, students, parents, and all of us need. It is not that schools should see a snow day as part of the curriculum, but they should have the sense to not get in the way of the role it can play for our (and our students) good. In the end, Robert Frost sums up the good of snow in his little “Dust of Snow” poem, “The way a crow / Shook down on me / The dust of snow / From a hemlock tree / Has given my heart / A change of mood / And saved some part / Of a day I had rued.” Cheers to the next snowy day! 

 

 

 

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