Replacing snow days with remote learning is worth considering. I should know. I’m a teacher

The Tacoma School District is asking parents whether they prefer traditional make-up days or remote school for the days we have snow. In his typically imperious way, News Tribune columnist Matt Driscoll declared the latter a terrible idea, and seems to lament that the district would even suggest it.

Not so fast. Remote school for a few days — likely spread across several months — may be worth considering. It is, after all, no more terrible an idea than adding days at the end of the year, which we do every time there are more than two days of snow.

Those days are beyond useless academically and they frustrate students, families and staff alike.

And remote school for snow is no more terrible an idea than the number of waived days that Tacoma gets for extra professional development. Those days do a lot less for students than anybody wishes, imagines or acknowledges.

Furthermore, Driscoll’s own explanation for his opposition to the idea is weak … dare I say, even, terrible. Studies show, he observes, that learning losses from remote school were significant. Yes, those losses were real — when remote school persisted for months on end. But a day or two of remote learning is not the same thing as six straight months.

In fact, remote learning doesn’t have to mean on a computer or the district’s online learning platforms, as Driscoll apparently assumes it must. Teachers could easily develop short activities that students could do without computers, or, certainly, without the online platform.

Indeed, in my district, we have one remote learning lesson at the ready right now, in the event the health department shuts us down for a COVID-19 outbreak in our school (or individual classroom). A couple more such plans wouldn’t be that hard to make.

But taking away snow fun blatantly disrespects what families have just been through, says Driscoll. (It might be worth considering the poll results before declaring what parents think.) In any case, snow play and learning can coexist. It is easy to imagine both snow time and learning on the same day.

Younger students can play in the snow and write or draw about their time. And practicing to present that work to the class upon return to school would make “remote” learning just work at home, like it has always been. You know, what we used to call homework.

Older students could look up cases where weather changed something in important historical events, or find the weather patterns for regions or countries they’ve been studying in social studies. Students could write a story or reader’s theater skit, and set it on a snow day. A search of “science of snow” yields plenty to both learn and do.

Yes, some of these activities assume access to a device, but just a little bit more planning would allow the creation of paper versions of this material, which could be handed out the day before a predicted snow.

It just wouldn’t take that much time or imagination to create something students could do at home that still supports learning and standards — if we all just decide we’re going to do that.

The best answer might be a blend of snow fun and remote learning. Would that be ‘snow-remote hybrid’? The first day of snow could be a good old-fashioned play day. Any further days in the same stretch would then activate the at-home learning activities.

We are unlikely to get more than a couple different sequences of snow episodes, so this arrangement increases our chances that the budgeted snow make-up days would be adequate.

A snow-driven shake-up — in the form of the snow-remote hybrid option — in the learning routine just might be a good thing. School isn’t what it used to be — student attitudes about its importance and usefulness have noticeably dipped — and as much as I wish it weren’t the case, we are needing to rebuild a disposition and commitment to the school process. It’s been slow going, and unlike in years past, an occasional snow-play learning day late start might actually be a useful tonic.

Andrew Milton is an 8th grade teacher at Pioneer Middle School in DuPont, parent of a Tacoma Public Schools student, occasional contributor to The News Tribune and author of The Normal Accident Theory of Education.

This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM.