Winter weather is once again upon us, but the snow day may be a thing of the past.
In the wake of our success with online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, snow days have now been replaced by the “pivot to online modality.” And we just did that at NIU this past Tuesday, when snow and ice made travel hazardous.
There are obvious benefits to this development as operations are not interrupted, and we can go on with business-as-usual despite the vicissitudes of weather. But before we bid adieu to the snow day, I want to recall what is being lost but also what unfortunately remains the same.
When I was a kid, snow days were glorious. I recall sitting in the kitchen listening to the radio and waiting for my school to be named in the litany of closings. After that, there were reruns of strange TV programs like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies along with a plethora of outdoor activities in the freshly fallen snow. We had sledding, snowball fights, and even good entrepreneurial opportunities, like shoveling the neighbor’s walk.
But I now realize that what we called “snow day” was a privilege, and I had friends whose families did not have the means to turn this disruption of the daily routine into an unexpected holiday. Unfortunately, the pivot to online delivery has done little or nothing to address this underlying problem.
So the more things change, the more they also kind of stay the same.
