Snow Day?
By: Lynn Smith
Tags: Snow Day, Social Emotional Learning, Teachers, NYC, Education

When I think back to second grade there are a few things I remember: I remember that my teacher had a jar of marbles and she arbitrarily added marbles to that jar on days when she liked us. Eventually, six months into the year, the jar filled up and we had earned a pizza party! (She must have forgotten her lunch that day.) I remember that our classroom had a tank with hamsters in it. I never got to take them home for the weekend or a holiday but I was a little scared of them anyway so that was probably for the best.

I remember when I told everyone in school that the nurse was my aunt because she lived next door to my grandparents and used to stop over with cheesecake on Christmas (that’s what an aunt is, right?) I remember that one day when I walked to school I had forgotten to wear gloves and it was so cold that I thought my fingers would fall off! My teacher ran me into the classroom and held my hands under warm water until I felt all better. My fingers are still intact.

I can’t remember any academics or assignments even though I was always the perfect little overachiever. I have no idea what book reports I did that year or what math concepts I mastered even though I was obsessed with the Babysitters Club series and Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land. I do however, remember the blizzard of ‘93….

The blizzard hit us hard in upstate New York. Even though we all knew it was coming there was still something so magical about waking up that first morning to 5+ feet of snow and cuddling back under the covers for a few extra minutes. It took the towns around us several days to clear all the roads so that meant we had three full snow days in a row. SNOWCATION!

So much happened during those three days. Hot cocoa was had, pajamas were worn and bedtimes adjusted. Most importantly though — we played! My two older brothers (who only previously “played” with me by practicing their WWE moves on me despite shrieks of terror) taught me to throw a cannonball into the snow from our front porch. We built a snow fort with igloos and tunnels that led to more igloos and more tunnels (how was it so warm in there???) We ran up the hill that had been our bus route the previous week and turned it into our neighborhood sledding and tubing slope — riding right down the middle of the street until we hit the mitten-built sled jump at the bottom and flew face first into a pile of that pillowy icy goodness. We shoveled and shoveled, threw snowballs and then shoveled some more. It was truly the stuff that cheesy Hallmark holiday movies are made of.

Reading the anecdotes above you must think my childhood was idyllic. I wish it had been. Most days were filled with feelings of abandonment, isolation and fear for reasons I won’t delve into now. Please don’t mistake this for me seeking sympathy — I’ve worked hard to turn my adult life into the counter thesis of those painful childhood experiences. I’m proud that I have become a teacher and therapist helping others to remedy some of the wrongs I endured growing up. But even in my enlightened adulthood, I still cling to those memories. The one when I felt my teacher really care about what happened to me and my ice burnt fingers. The one when my brothers let me play alongside them for a half a week instead of bullying me with a team of their friends. The one when we got to take a break from the stress of school and homework to experience nature in its most awesome frigid glory.

These moments gave me hope as a child. Yes, I still learned how to read and write and manage an excel spreadsheet with the best of them, but most importantly in those moments I received some much needed human connection and a sense of belonging. The same essential needs that must be met for every child to develop into an emotionally healthy adult. Those same inherent developmental needs that are the central element of Maslow’s hierarchy (I can’t seem to find the part that talks about proper grammar or ten frames.)

Don’t get me wrong, I get chills of excitement when one of my students masters a new vocabulary word or realizes that they can draw a rocket by combining a triangle, a rectangle and two rhombuses. But as the snow accumulates out my window and I glance at the memo I just received from work — ‘inclement weather is not an excuse for a day off from learning’ — snow days cease to exist and a little bit of that magic dies. Tomorrow, as per the city’s mandate, students in New York City will sit inside staring at a screen all day or else they will be marked absent.

Shhh — don’t tell — in my class we will build snowmen.