Why Teachers love Snow Days

• by Amy Bowker

• December 17, 2014

For those of you reading this, not in the education field I know you are thinking snow days mean teachers can be lazy.

This is truly not the case. Everyday teachers get a 40 minutes prep to plan, write reports, call or email parents, photocopy, plan field trips, meet with colleagues and so much more. This cannot be done in 40 minutes.

Teachers love snow days because:

Time to clean:
By the time the snow hits, we have been teaching for 4-5 months. That means time for a HUGE clean up. The day of a snow day I always spend the whole morning cleaning up with any students that come in to school. We always find random pencils and markers behind the bookcases and disgustingly enough, food where they never should have been food.

Time to spend quality time with students:
Teaching is a busy job. Currently, I have 25 grade 1/2’s and that doesn’t give me much one on one time with any of them. Snow Days are a nice time to sit, chat and actually do an activity with the students.

Time to plan ahead:
Since we plan daily, sometimes we need to check our long range plans. These a guides we create to figure out when and what we are teaching throughout the year. These snow days let us have time to see where we are and what we still need to teach going forward.

Time to Collaborate:
During a snow day, we usually put some classes of students together so teachers can have some much needed planning time together. The best teaching comes from teachers who collaborate so we find the time to make that happen.

I would love to hear what you do on your snow days at your school!