Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts

Thursday, February 11, 2010

You're Going to Have To Drag Me Out of My Room Kicking and Screaming

Finally, we were back in school today after what seems to have been day after day after day of snow days. It's still cold out (didn't get above freezing today, about, oh, 15 degrees below normal) and the snow isn't melting much, but it's not on the roads and the buses can run so we're in session.

And we're so freaking far behind that it's nearly giving me hives.

This whole year has been a race from the get go. Not only did we get new, tougher, standards, but for some reason seventh grade ended up with a lot more material to cover than either sixth or eighth grade did. We can't quite figure this out. You would think the Powers That Be would have evened it up a bit, but NOOOOO, they had to give the most content to the group that is probably the least capable of learning anything, and that's seventh graders. It's the hormones.

Anyway, we've had a dickens of a time trying to keep up with the pacing guide established over the summer and now, after seven snow days, Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Hummingbird and I just looked at each other, tossed it aside and said, "Screw it."

Yeah, well, we may not be ready for the third benchmark but at this point We Don't Freaking Care anymore. We'll be ready for the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Test come April, but it's going to be a battle to get there. We don't need any more snow days, and God forbid, any of us get sick and have to turn our classes over to a sub. We need to be here, in our rooms, teaching like there's no tomorrow.

Which makes me wonder why Mrs. Standards wants me to come to a meeting at Central Office to help some other seventh grade teachers put together a Very Big Deal Government Mandated Test review program.

Let me step back a bit. About five or six years ago, Mrs. Eagle and I, along with our other seventh grade science teacher at the time, Mrs. Robin, asked Mrs. Standards if she could help us come up with a really good two week review program for the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Test. Great idea! So we put this program together, which is basically a theme/standard a day, lots of mini-labs, mini quizzes, hands on, keep them so busy they can't even think of getting into trouble, review. It kicks ass. It's complete chaos and it's exhausting, but the end result? Best damn scores in the county.

So, this year I've helped Mrs. Standards with some tech stuff on the new textbook, even taught an in service on how to use the online features (I swear, I can't believe how many teachers aren't even using this, but that's another story for another day) and now I'm apparently her go-to person when it comes to seventh grade stuff.

So, apparently some of the other seventh grade teachers in The District had heard about our program (and probably wondered "How in the hell did they get those scores out of those little gangbangers over at That School?") and asked if I could help them put together something for their kids.

Hey, no problem, I'm glad to share.

Except I find out that she wants me to take half a day (of course the half when I'm teaching and don't have planning) and leave my room to go help these other teachers.

Which I'm not willing to do. We've lost seven days - that's SEVEN DAYS - so far to snow (and more coming), and I'm not leaving my classroom when I still have teaching to do.

So, I email her and inform her that Mrs. Eagle and Mrs. Hummingbird are actually working on The Program (we're re-writing it with all the new standards, and since Mrs. Eagle is Mrs. Hummingbird's mentor, they're using this as mentoring time too) every Friday and we'd all be glad to have anyone come over and work with us, but it will have to be after school.

Because we aren't leaving our classrooms until that Damn Very Big Deal Government Mandated Test is over.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Enough Already

The District builds three snow days into our calendar.

We used two of them right after we returned to school in early January.

We used our third on Friday.

Our fourth was today.

And the fifth will be tomorrow as they just canceled school again for Tuesday.

At this rate, we'll be going into the middle of June.

And you know, you just know, that they won't reschedule The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests even if we do miss instructional time due to the weather....

ARGH

Saturday, January 30, 2010

And Yet More Snow


Kinda makes one wonder if we'll even have school on Monday considering the rural county roads are an absolute mess.

Friday, January 08, 2010

And Yet Another

Snow Day Number Two.

Surprisingly, it was called on Thursday afternoon (which allowed many of us to stay awake and watch the BCS championship game without worrying about how little sleep we'd get on a school night). Amazing how fast the emails and text messages flew among the faculty when the call came out about a second snow day. Although not much snow was predicted, the roads off the main drags were a mess.

The terrain here is hilly and curvy with lots of dips and turns in most of the roads, even many that are within the city limits. Mr. Bluebird and I went out and ran errands yesterday, and there were some roads that were just fine, but others were littered with abandoned (and in some cases, smashed up) vehicles. Unfortunately, when it's icy and cold (and it's a whopping 18 degrees right now), this can be treacherous.

The Guidance Goddess lives in a rural part of the county, at the foot of the hill. She spent most of the day watching people attempt to climb the hill, fail, and then slide backwards. By the end of the night she'd seen four wrecks, including a beautiful new truck that appeared to have been totaled, and was getting used to the blue and red flashing lights blinking on and off at the foot of her driveway.

It is also brutally cold for this part of the country. Most of our homes are heated with electric heat and heat pumps and trust me, when it gets to about 20 degrees outside, those heat pumps just can't cut it. I'm lucky to keep it around 63-64 degrees in the house right now, so I'm thankful that I am a knitter and have lots of warm woolly things to help keep us warm. We won't hit 32 degrees until maybe Monday.

And to make it worse...it was warmer this morning in Chicago - Chicago! - than it was here.

That's just plain wrong, folks.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Germ Factories and Sound of Ice

Monday morning found Mrs. Social Studies crawling into class, unable to hear out of her left ear, her right ear wasn't much better, and her face was tingling. We found a sub and she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a double ear infection. Before she left, she said it was weird not being able to hear anything the students were saying. In some cases, it might be considered a blessing.

Mrs. Social Studies was not alone. All three administrators are sick, with The Principal croaking her way through morning announcements as she's the only one with a voice. A whole slew of teachers were out with the flu and just about every other contagion available. And I had what I thought was perhaps strep throat (were talking pain, here) but the test came back negative and was diagnosed as a weird throat virus that's going around. Oh yippee. So it was ibuprofen, salt water gargles, cough drops, rest, and oh yeah, try not to talk.

They were calling for a Really Bad Winter Weather Event to hit our area, so we were all hoping for a snow day today. Honestly, with the number of kids sniffling and croaking in class and along with the amount of teachers that were sick as well, a snow day would have been a blessing.

Except it wasn't snow. It was ice.

When the alarm went off at 5:00, I checked the temperature (31 degrees) and looked outside. It was raining and everything was shining with a glaze of ice. The local news reported that school was closed, which was pretty much a no-brainer. Most of the counties in this part of the state closed due to ice.

Since I have trouble going back to sleep once I'm awake, I sort of lazed around a bit, watched the kitties wrestle and chase each other, and prayed we wouldn't lose power.

Mrs. Eagle called a few hours later to find out what I was doing.

"Just reading. Drinking hot liquids that make my throat feel better. You?"

"I've been up since 2:30 am," she said.

"Why on earth?" I asked her. Mrs. Eagle, like me, can be a light sleeper.

"That's when all the tree branches around the house started to snap. It sounded like shotgun blasts all night long. I kept wondering if one was going to come crashing through the roof," she said.

She had power still, which is a plus. According to the local news, there's quite a few places in the county that don't have any power and may not get any anytime soon. They are calling for more ice and snow tonight, and more power outages, so hubby and I have been collecting gear just in case - candles, the little portable generator, my Civil War reenacting cooking gear, the little BBQ, and briquettes. We figure if the power goes out and lasts more than a day or so, we can at least cook something hot to eat in the BBQ on the driveway. I used to do a lot of camping and cooking over open fires, so that skill may come in handy yet again. As long as I can make myself a hot cup of coffee, I'll be fine. Even if I have to make it in the rain and snow in my driveway.

As for school tomorrow? Who knows? We have parent teacher conferences scheduled for Thursday. Past experience points to the fact that the parents won't come out unless the weather is clear and dry. We may end up sitting there playing cards all night waiting for parents to show up.

That is if we even have school by then.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Popsicles Anyone?

We have our first snow day of the year today.

Well, actually it's more of an ice day since that's what's on the ground - and roads - hence the cancellation of school. It pretty much rained all day yesterday. However, when I left my house yesterday morning at 6:00 am it was 55 degrees on my front porch. When I got to school fifteen minutes later it had already dropped to 45 degrees. It continued to drop - and rain - all day long and by yesterday evening ice was starting to form.

Having spent about fifteen years up North where it snows and ices and generally is ugly from about November through March, I have some experience driving in stupid weather conditions. However, when ice is in the picture, I'm not driving anywhere. It's dangerous and it's scary and there's too many idiots with testosterone poisoning who think that because they have a four wheeled drive vehicle they can drive at high rates of speed on icy roads and nothing bad will happen to them. Wrong.

So I have a day off and I'm not terribly excited about it.

Why? Snow days are precious. We get three a year and using one right before we get off for our Christmas break is a waste of a perfectly good snow day. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Snow days are better spent in the deep dark depths of January and February and even March where we don't have many extra days off, the weather is gloomy, the kids are cranky, and it seems like forever until there's something to look forward to.

But at least I'm not out there driving on that mess!

P.S. Some of you have commented on still having school in very cold snowy weather, so I probably haven't explained how things work down here. I was stunned - stunned - the first year I was here and a snow day was called as it was barely snowing (at least in my opinion as an economic refugee from Up North). However, maybe only 20%, at most, of our kids walk to school. The rest are bused in, some from about an hour away in the rural parts of the county. There is also no such thing as a straight road here. Everything is hilly, curvy and there are more rivers, branches of rivers, creeks and whatnot to cross to get anywhere in this area. So, when it gets icy (and we get more ice than snow), it gets treacherous and no one wants to be the person responsible for a bus crash on an iced over bridge or narrow rural road. So, they cancel school.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Middle Schoolers plus Snow equals Chaos

The local weather forecasters have been prognosticating for nearly a week that we were going to have A Very Big Snow Storm beginning this morning and going on into Saturday. This is the South where Very Big Snow Storms don't happen all that much and everyone gets all freaked out and rushes out and buys bread and milk. So you would think, considering that we've canceled school for the simple threat of ice, that we wouldn't have school today.

Makes sense, right?

After all, when I stepped out onto my driveway this morning at 5:45 am, it was sleeting nicely and there was ice on my car. I met the rest of the Breakfast Bunch (Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Chicken, and Mrs. Momma-Aide) at Waffle House for our traditional Friday breakfast, and we were all sitting there, stunned, that they hadn't called school yet. My gosh, it was sleeting like mad out there!! We rolled into school about twenty minutes before they started unloading kids from the buses and they still hadn't called it. Although it hasn't happened since I've been at The School, in the past they've actually canceled school and had the buses go back out and drop the kids off.

Not today.

The kids came stomping in grumbling and complaining about how they all wanted to sleep in and it wasn't fair and it was awful and gosh it's just dreadful they had to go to school today. Considering that I finalized grades this past week and noticed that in between holidays, election day and snow days we haven't had a five day week since the middle of January, I think they were getting a bit spoiled. This four day school week was really appealing to them. However, we have already used up our three allotted snow days this year. Personally, I'm not enthralled with the idea of adding days to the end of the year.

So we had first period, and second, and third, and nothing...the kids had finally settled down and were working pretty well when it was time to go to lunch. Unfortunately we walk them down to lunch right past a series of big glass doors and they all looked out and saw....SNOW!

Great. They hit the cafeteria all wound up, convinced that, at last, they were going to go home. It only got worse when they heard an announcement over the broadcast system calling all the eighth grade team leaders to the office.

By the time we got back to class they were nearly pinging off the walls. We had an email waiting for us telling us that school was going to be released at noon.

In an hour and a half.

We had, obviously, already had lunch so we proceeded to continue on with the day, teaching and trying to keep our kids focused and on-task while the cafeteria quickly got the 6th graders and 8th graders fed. I felt bad for the eighth grade teachers as they had to march the kids to the cafeteria, have them pick up lunch on special foam trays, and march them back to their classrooms for them to eat.

By the time my fifth period rolled around, nearly half of them had already had a parent come by and dismiss them. By the time the call went out to load the buses the kids were nearly besides themselves with excitement.

We were just hoping they could all get the kids dropped off at home and didn't have to turn around and bring them back to school. The thought of being stuck with these kids for hours on end, and possibly overnight if it really get nasty, was enough to scare the bejeebers out of any of us.

Fortunately the buses got off, the roads weren't bad - yet - and we all got dismissed ourselves at twelve thirty.

And as for me, I don't go the bread and milk route. I've got a case of local wine and plenty of popcorn if I need it.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Just When You Least Expect It

It's 5:15 am. I've been up for about half an hour, my hair is wet, and I'm watching the local news and waiting for my steel cut oatmeal to cook. My cell rings. It's Mrs. Eagle.

"Have you heard anything about us closing?" she asks.

"No, there's nothing on the news, but I checked The National Weather Service and it said we had a chance of snow and sleet. I didn't think that was forecast until late tonight."

"It wasn't, but it's snowing like mad here," she replies. She lives in the western part of the county.

I look out on my back deck. Nothing.

"Nothing here, but that just means you're at the beginning of the storm," I reply. I check the scroll at the bottom of the news and see that a few school districts west of us are closing. "I don't see us on the news yet," I tell her.

"Well," she huffs and I can tell she's outside, "I need to chase down the dogs, so call me if you hear anything."

So I watch the news for a bit and more schools start closing. I look outside and start to notice a few flakes falling down onto the deck. I check the news station again. And finally, there it was...

We're closed! We have our snow day!!!

And the funny thing is that after two near misses in snow days, where my students obsessed over the weather reports, this one snuck up and caught us all by surprise.

I hope my kids have a great day off. Me? I will too.

P.S. And for those of you up in the Great White North, I know you don't think snow days are a big deal...but for those of us in The South, they're rare and treasured like jewels!

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Wishing, Hoping, Praying

My students have taken to our weather unit with a passion I rarely see out of them except when they're talking about video games, the opposite sex, or the latest movie they've seen. They are obsessed with weather reports.

"Mrs. Bluebird, can you show us that weather service site?" they ask nearly every period. So I indulge them and show the National Weather Service page for our town on my big screen. We've spent a lot of time reading weather maps and station models and they can work their way through this page like pros.

"Ah, man, look at that dewpoint. It's not high enough," I can hear one of them exclaim.

"Yeah, the air isn't saturated," someone pipes up. "And if it's not saturated, there's no precipitation."

"And the temperature. It's going to start falling in a few days," another chimes in.

"Yeah, but not too far," another adds.

They discuss cloud cover, air temperature, and dewpoints. They look at high pressure areas and low pressure areas and ponder what, exactly, we can expect in a few days.

It has absolutely nothing to do with my teaching, the quality of my lessons, or the material being presented.

Pure and simple...they are praying for a snow day.