Humor
Childhood Is Fleeting, So Let’s Replace Snow Days with Online Learning
We’ll have snowball fights on Zoom, hands-off paper snowflake tutorials, and other kinds of fun
Dear Students,
Snow days are the best. Sledding, snow ball fights, marveling at the glory of nature. It’s a wonderful time, isn’t it? Or, I should say it was, before I realized I forgot to schedule make-up days into the school calendar. That means you’ll be spending the entire day hunched over a laptop pretending to participate in online classes just like I’m pretending to act in the best interest of your education and wellbeing.
As you may know, I’m obligated by the district to sentence you to eight hours of online learning instead of closing school completely. I use the term “learning” loosely since you are, of course, unlikely to learn anything. We tried it for over a year, remember? It’s just not going to happen.
If it’s any consolation, I’ll be on Zoom too, logging into your calls under the pretense of solving technical issues. In reality I’ll be verifying that you and your teachers are making a genuine effort toward the impossible task of transforming the centuries-old tradition of schooling into a few instant messages and a video call.
If you’re unsure what to do please email your teachers. This will be a great opportunity to build camaraderie since they’ll be wishing they were outside enjoying the snow too, instead of trying in vain to teach. Just keep in mind that they may also be trying to keep their kids glued to their screens and that they’ve had all of twelve minutes to prepare for this completely novel, marginally effective method of teaching.
Unless we all want to be in violation of statute 1029.66J, you must be present for the entire school day. By which I mean sitting in front of your computer with the camera on while you browse Reddit. The camera piece is critical, as this will provide your teachers with the false sense that you are actually learning something instead of privately mocking them in Google Chat.
As you may recall, one of our post-pandemic goals is promoting student wellness. With that in mind I’ve been working with Student Council to organize a school-wide snowball fight. Simply find a couple pieces of paper, crumple them into “snowballs,” and join this Zoom call at 9:55. Once we’re all there (attendance, as you might expect, is mandatory) we’ll throw our crumpled paper at our screens. Fun.
There are still some details to work out, but hopefully this afternoon you’ll be able to participate in cutting out paper snowflakes, and by participate I mean watch someone else do it via Zoom without actually doing anything yourself, which you’ll probably be quite used to by that point in the day.
The truth is that even though snow is magical and one of the most glorious parts of childhood, it’s also cold and wet. I’m hoping that doing these activities via Zoom will somehow, by the grace of God, make them more fun rather than less, but let me tell you, I’m not holding my breath. In fact, I’m barely holding on to anything.
If at any point today you find yourself wishing you were playing in the snow just remember that you’re nothing more than a guinea pig in one of the great social experiments of our time, and that your suffering and alienation may actually turn out to be the thing that shows us that we’re completely on the wrong track here and that maybe, just maybe, we ought to reconsider our priorities. But again, not holding my breath.
Finally, I really want to stress that I do want you to try to get outside and enjoy the weather. Just don’t forget your laptop.
Sincerely,
Your Principal
