Shout Out To All The School Districts Who Gave Their Students A Proper Snow Day

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The year 2020 — which will be forever known as the year of the pandemic — came during my 27th year of life. And frankly, all things considered, I feel rather lucky about when this historic and global detour impacted my life.

If you’re reading this and you find yourself in college, I apologize, I really do: you have my sympathies. My friends and I often wonder about what we would’ve done if our Junior year of college was cut short before the glory of Spring and our Senior year was evaporated entirely. Those were two of the most carefree, fun-filled years of my life, and some people out there are currently in the midst of losing that, and I feel for them. The same can be said about Seniors in high school or parents with kindergarten age children: while there’s no ideal time to live through a pandemic, I’m well aware that my temporal situation is better than most.

The loss of life experiences isn’t unique to college-aged kids and adults, though, as our children have also felt the impact of the pandemic, as their worlds were flipped upside as their schools — which is more or less the only life children know — were closed. And one of the more underrated aspects of in-person learning being substituted with remote learning is that it may have killed one of the tried-and-true thrills of being a school-aged kid: the snow day.

Ah, yes, the snow day: the feeling as though Mother Nature has gifted you a free 24 hours to do whatever the hell you want. You’d sleep with your pajamas inside out and you’d stay up as late as possible counting the inches of snow, hoping the school district would make the call or send the email before you went to sleep.

But with the global pandemic ushering in a new age of remote learning, the Snow Day — in places like New York City (thanks, de Blasio!) — faces extinction, which is why it’s necessary that we shout out all of the school districts out there who’ve made the right decision to give their students and staff a proper snow day to spend with their family. Just because we’ve had our year stolen from us, doesn’t mean we need to steal our children’s youth, too.

https://twitter.com/BostonCathSupt/status/1339518646507495427