Reclaim lost school days
‘Blizzard Bags’ or make-up teaching days?
School days lost to storms and blizzards are mounting and, predictably, it’s become fodder for coffee shop chatter. After nine school day cancellations, including five days in a row, Prince Edward Island is turning heads, even on the mainland. While Islanders are taking it in stride, school authorities elsewhere are awakening to the fundamental issue – the erosion of learning time and its impact on both student engagement and achievement.
Compared to Prince Edward Island, American state governments and school districts have moved from isolated chatter to collective action. Transforming school snow days into e-learning days opened the door to what are known as “Blizzard Bags”. With a storm approaching, teachers are prepared with classbased homework assignments, inserted in special bags, to ensure continuity in teaching and learning.
Last winter was a record-setter on the Island. Winter storms battered P.E.I. hitting hard in March and CBC News reported on March 28, 2014 that 11 full days had been lost to cancellations. We are approaching that total again with a month of winter still ahead of us.
Connecting the dots leads to one inescapable conclusion: Students in Prince Edward Island, as well as in neighbouring provinces, would be doing better if they actually spent more time in school and were expected to complete work now being “written-off ” in our public schools.
Cancelling whole school days for real or threatened severe weather, then allowing between 16 days to be consumed by PD days for professional activities is only compounding the province’s well-known student performance challenges.
No school system anywhere can be competitive when students are only in school for 170 of the scheduled 181 instructional days. Announcing across-the-board school closures is also unusual when conditions vary so much between Charlottetown school zones and outlying rural areas. Saying that cancelled school days cannot be made up will no longer suffice.
A year ago, my proposal to consider turning snow days into e-learning days attracted much media attention, but precious little action. One Moncton independent school, Riverbend Community School, did step up, using school connected iPads, requiring students to complete extra homework when school days are cancelled because of extreme weather conditions.
Not every school has such advantages. If e-learning days cannot be implemented because of the uneven state of Internet and home computer access, simply shrugging it off is no longer tenable.
The American ‘Snow-Belt’ states are way ahead of us in tackling the problem of repeated school day cancellations. Confronted with the problem, good old “Yankee ingenuity” sprouted up in Ohio, Minnesota and New Hampshire. Creative solutions are now appearing in the Greater Boston area, where school superintendents have stepped up to meet the challenge.
The state of Ohio was first out of the gate. Five school days a year were designated “calamity days” to accommodate storms, power outages, tornadoes and local events, including fires, roof leaks and boiler problems.
Lost days, above three days, then later five, were re-claimed by alternative means, including e-days, replacing PD days or adding ‘ make-up’ days at the end of term.
E-learning days emerged over the past five years as a popular alternative, employed in some 200 Ohio schools, mostly in rural and remote school districts. Given the choice between providing e-learning activities during snow days and giving up PD or holiday time, teachers warmed to the concept and it was incorporated into the school’s curricular program.
The wintry blast of 2014 wrecked havoc in the state school system and ultimately claimed the calamity days model. In September 2014, Ohio shifted from mandating school days to setting minimum annual hours of instruction, specifying 910 hours of instruction for K-6 and 1,001 hours for 7-12, and permitting more flexibility in implementing replacement days.
Ohio’s calamity days were ahead of the curve and states like Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine have taken different approaches. In the Greater Boston area, Burlington city schools are now leading the way – providing students with Blizzard Bags and the option of completing work online or in traditional fashion.
Building and developing an effective snow days alternative program is not easy, but Burlington public schools are proving that it can be done. Assistant superintendent Patrick M. Larkin was “underwhelmed” with Blizzard Bags from a cross-section of Ohio schools that were stuffed with worksheets and rather mundane homework assignments.
Working with teachers, Larkin has ensured that Blizzard Bags are now being filled with more challenging assignments requiring independent thinking, collaboration, digital learning, peer feedback and teacher guidance.
Whether schools are open or not, student learning should not be suspended for days on end. Bring back those homework pouches with a fancy name like “Blizzard Bag” and get started on the task of weaning today’s kids off Netflix and video games.