Some school districts are utilizing “Online Learning” to replace snow days. There has been a bit of discussion about this, with people asking “How would it work?” or “Why is this happening?”. With certain people being disgusted by the thought and others agreeing with this possibility.
With having undergone Online learning under the recent Pandemic, there is a great chance that even teacher’s children won’t be going to school on a snow day, but instead will be doing online learning at home. There are complaints about online learning, one of the complaints from an educator who had to scramble to put something together while trying to teach their class as they looked after their 3 year old whose daycare closed due to snow. A second complaint followed, about how teachers having to take care of their own children while teaching their students on Zoom at the same time, is an burden that they shouldn’t be put through.
Along with the fact that students could easily abuse this power to NOT pay attention in classes, there are multiple tools and apps that cycle through various videos and frames that act like as live webcam. Students could easily loop themselves “paying attention” while they sit back and do nothing, and easily just switch back to their webcam with a simple transition. Sure it does sound like a lot of work, to not actually do work, but I’ve seen people actually do it. While many students also opt in to not do their work once teachers puts them into a breakout room.
As we currently know, some districts are replacing snow days with online learning. A theory is that since there won’t be an excessive amount of days called out for snow days, there won’t be a need add more days that cut into summer break at the end of a school year. This allows teachers to teach their class instead of having the lesson get cut off, especially if there are multiple snow days in a row potentially derailing the 5 day School Week. Especially if a class is having a test on a subject, for example my Algebra class has a quiz after every 3 notes taken within a unit that we learn. If a snow day were to impact those days, without the ability to meet online, the work would then have to be pushed to the side causing delays. With online learning the work would be able to be completed… but the counter being that heavy snow could mess with people’s power, wifi connections, etc. Meaning lack of ability to participate because of the weathering effects on electronics.
In conclusion, we shouldn’t really have online classes as a replacement for snow days unless the District makes it so, students and teachers have the same ability to participate and join without the fear of getting in trouble if their electronics are faulty.