Another snow day

When I got the call last night about another snow day today, I was flat out irritated. Please know--I get it. It's bitterly, dangerously cold and many kids in my community don't have parents who make sure their kids have/wear warm clothes. It's not snowing, but it's not safe for some kids to be out and, like it or not, the public schools have to make good decisions for many kids who walk through our halls every day. I know this. I live this. But this week--without snow days--is one of my favorites all year.

It's finals week. There are three days of final exams. Mornings are devoted to tests and afternoons are work time. I give easy to grade tests and manage to get a couple of hours to grade papers, clean my desk, and reset myself for second semester. Since kids leave at lunch, I also get time to go out to lunch with my colleagues. I LOVE going out to lunch. But three days of finals in two days means that there are tests all day, no time to go out to lunch (can you say left over instant cheddar potato soup for me?), my desk stays disorganized and I don't really get time to reset.

I need the time to reset. Many of my students need a lot of extra help, I'm learning a couple of new computer programs and I'm teaching from a new text book. Any one of those things alone would make me need about 25 hours in a day (and the ability to sleep 2 hours a day) to get my job done well. Put them all together and I feel like my life is one big, giant game of "Whack a Mole." I'm racing around trying to solve problems and nothing is getting done. It's frustrating to go to work, know how to get things done the right way and simply not be able to make it happen.

The best part of this semester has been watching Elsa learn to talk--it truly reminds me why it's fun to teach language. She learned to say elbow on the same day as I taught the Spanish word for elbow at school. She thought it was fun the ten times Derek and I pointed to our elbows and said, "What's this?" The teenagers were not so amused by doing something similar in class that day. (They were also WAY TOO COOL for Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, in case you were wondering.) Elsa is repeating and mimicking everything she hears. Are you surprised to hear that the teenagers look at me LIKE I'M CRAZY when I ask them to repeat after me in class. (And a few have even said "I don't need to repeat. I'll just listen.") She's even been making jumps between words--she saw a Gatorade commercial and at the end of it said, "Juice." We repeated Queen's "We Will Rock You" today along with the radio and after about four times, she looked over at her rocking chair and said, "Rock." I had to tell her that "rock" has different meanings!

She naturally does the things that I try to get students to do in school. It's been incredibly interesting and makes me feel much better after a day spent battling with teenagers who never do written work in class because they can't remember to bring pencils or who can't figure out what "internacional" means in Spanish because they don't like looking up words (!!!!). I'm sure that five years from now I will not be at all sorry that I spent two snow days playing in the snow, reading books with Elsa or eating lunch with my parents, but today, I wanted some time to reset and try to get a handle on next semester.