Monday, February 4, 2019

Snow day; online option?

It is has been awhile but with FLL competitions and end of semester it has been a busy winter. However I now have time to write and post more.

https://libreshot.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/playing-children-on-snow.jpg
Today is a snow day for my district and my kids district. This is a day that kids and some teachers dream of, no school for a day. However for some it is a bitter sweet day as we know that it will mean we will have to make the day up later on in the year. For some that isn't a big deal but for others it can be as you may have scheduled vacations on those days. I often wondered what if there was an option to not have to make those days up and still meet the learning requirements?

It wasn't until this year that I may have found an option. Over the past 2 years we have been working on our new school building. This has been an exciting challenge as we will be working in our main building as they tear down and build parts of our new building. One of the challenges we will have is to serve lunch in our main building while teaching. We have had many creative solutions posed and that we are working on but one that was suggested as a way out of the box option is online classes. Some of my colleagues scoffed at the idea, yes I was the one who proposed it. Some outright said it wasn't an option because not everyone had access and other typical excuses when it comes to tech use. However there were some who thought it was worth at least some discussion and thought. It turns out there are some schools back east that offer this option. Instead of closing down for the day due to snow they have teachers submit lessons online for students to do on the "day off". Yes there are access issues for those that don't have internet but lets try looking past that. There will always be barriers to learning no matter how we choose to deliver instruction. Good teachers know how to blow past those barriers or turn them into spring boards to learning.

I wonder if what your thoughts are on this topic. Would this work here in the Northwest? I will your thoughts.

1 comment: