Desperate Call for Return of Snow Days

• January 13, 2022

Camille Storch and Shravya Sathi

EDITORS IN CHIEF

The classic snow day always starts the same way. You check the Snow Day Calculator before bed, it says fifty percent, and you already know what is to come at five a.m. the next morning. You don’t even set your alarm because you know you will be woken up by the good news: It’s a snow day! 

You sleep to your heart’s desire, before the sunlight burns through your windows and wakes you up. You get up, brush your teeth, and you cuddle near the fireplace while grabbing breakfast, before picking your next activity on this refreshing day. It could vary from playing video games, playing outside in the snow, and if you’re a stressed-out junior, working on missing homework assignments during the hardest year of high school. No matter what you choose to do with your day, we can all agree, snow days are irreplaceable jewels. 

“I did a lot of different things with snow days, but I mostly took these days to return to lost hobbies, bake, spend time with family, and just used them as a treat,” reflected Caroline Pritchard, a senior. 

For students as young as five or old as eighteen, for even the teachers, snow days bring a kind of excitement like no other. With remote learning last year, we were stripped of this excitement. 

Instead of waking up on a snowy morning and going down to make a warm breakfast or taking a walk outside, we were forced to roll out of bed and immediately log onto a Google Meet. 

Despite teachers being kind and lenient on these days, it was still a full day of online school, nonetheless. 

School can lead to unwanted stress, anxiety, and emotional breakdowns. The beauty of the snow day is that all of this built up stress from the previous day easily dissolves.

“I think one of the reasons last year was so difficult, other than the entire hybrid situation, was that we had no snow days to look forward to and we didn’t have that excitement,” said Riley Caruso, a senior. 

In this day and age, all students (regardless of grade) are glued to a computer screen all day in class, and many more continue to be attached after school, doing homework. Having the opportunity to go take a walk outside in the crisp, fresh air or make a snowman with friends is exactly what students need.

This year, there were rumors and fears circulating throughout schools: snow days will be lost to remote days. However, that is not true. There will be no more remote days as per Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “Remote learning is not an option this fall, unless a district has created a virtual school within its district,” said DESE’s website.

As mentioned in a Patch article from November 11, 2021, “Salem Superintendent Steve Zrike said, ‘they have not issued any guidance for that at this point. So right now if we were to have an inclement weather day it would have to be a traditional snow day because [the Department of Ed is] not allowing remote days — only in the event of a classroom closure due to COVID, not for snow days.’”

This news is music to our ears. Especially for the younger students, it is something that is fairly new. Those who are in middle and high school have all experienced the joy and thrill of a real snow day before, but many of our younger elementary school kids have been faced with school on what should have been a real New England snow day. 

Due to COVID restrictions during the past two years, children have also not been able to hang out with friends. If children were able to hang out with friends, masks could have stolen the full experience of breathing in the snowy air, going home with chapped lips and a pink nose. 

Last school year, the one wind storm that took out power in the majority of town was the closest we came to a “snow day.” However, many of us got it back and attended classes the next day. 

It is hard, but we are all in this together. Luckily, there is the chance for real snow days this year, and hopefully, Mother Nature will cooperate and throw a couple snow storms our way.