Recovering from snow days

Clarke County School District cancelled school and all after school activities on Jan. 17 and 18 because of a winter weather advisory. Due to the days off, some students feel that it was hard to adjust to the schedule adjustment. “I had plenty of important work that got pushed back,” sophomore Maggie Demaria said. “While some thought it (was) a blessing to get classwork and tests pushed back, I would rather just get it done with than have it still lurking on my plate.” Graphic by Katie Grace Upchurch

Clarke County School District closed all schools on Jan. 17 and 18 due to a winter weather advisory. Students and faculty are feeling the effects of the days off.

Clarke County School District closed all schools and district offices on Jan. 17 and 18 due to a winter weather advisory. Because of the snow days, teachers had to push back already scheduled work and tests.

Despite having to readjust, Clarke Central High School math department teacher Dr. Elijah Swift does not feel that the days off had much effect on school.

“Really, I don’t think (the snow days) had any effect. We as teachers had to make some adjustments to our plans,” Swift said. “(So,) I just moved what we were gonna do on those days to different days.”

CCHS science department teacher Dr. Michael Gatlin also believes that the snow days did not have much effect on school.

“The way that we have (the days) set up in every class I teach, there are days where you account for having some kind of issue, so you kind of factor those in when you’re planning out the units and all that good stuff,” Gatlin said. “So overall, it’s not gonna impact us that much.”

According to Gatlin, the snow days are a nice break from school.

“During (January) and April, there aren’t a lot of breaks built in, and so I think (snow days are) a nice break for (students and faculty).”

CCHS sophomore Maggie Demaria feels differently. Demaria says she has felt a negative effect from the snow days.

“The snow days most definitely had an impact on school. This is because we just got back into the routine and (the snow days) not only messed it up but threw our classes’ schedules totally off,” Demaria said.

Demaria says that the impact was negative because class work and tests were postponed due to the snow days.

“I had plenty of important work that got pushed back,” Demaria said. “While some thought it (was) a blessing to get classwork and tests pushed back, I would rather just get it done with than have it still lurking on my plate.”

Swift believes that to combat this problem, the school should utilize students’ personal learning devices to continue school outside of the classroom on snow days.

“Yes, we will have to catch up some stuff, but (in the future) when we have days like that I would like to move to (using) digital learning devices since all of our students have access to them. We could have still had school away from school,” Swift said. “In fact in some school districts, that’s what they had to do, they send the assignments and instruction was still going on. Those things I feel should be put in place, just for that purpose.”

More from Katie Grace Upchurch