Schools and Snow

I've always liked schools on those days--one or two a semester--when snow makes districts across the state teeter on the brink of canceling classes. Those are the days when classrooms are one third full with kids carrying heavy parkas and shod in moon boots and they all sit around talking about how hard it was to get to school and how stupid the superintendent is for not canceling. I liked hanging out in the otherwise idle classroom with those few hearty souls, drinking coffee, catching up on gossip, sometimes even talking about classwork, letting kids go out to the cafeteria to get hot chocolate. On days when the snow looked particularly beautiful, I'd get the class to go outside with me and make snow angels.

I would periodically walk out of my windowless classroom and down to the door at the end of the hall to check out the weather. There would usually be a small and ever changing group of teachers huddled around the little window, speculating on when the superintendent would tell us to close up shop, guessing at the road conditions and the chances of making it home without major delays.

If I was lucky, I would have left all of my papers in need of grading at home so I could waste my planning period in the lounge drinking coffee and bitching about suspect decision making skills at the district level. Back in the good old days before smoking was banned, the lounge would be filled with smoke and loud stories from jaded assistant principals with nothing else to do but regale us with school humor and inside stories.

Somewhere around eleven when the honchos finally cancelled school, we would all bond in the unplowed parking lot, window scrapers in hand, custodians coming around with battery chargers, hapless kids looking forlornly out at Green Mountain Drive for any signs of a ride. We truly were a community on days like those. More than once we stayed around till the lot was empty, pushing and jumping cars, giving frozen kids a ride home and then coming back up the hill for more.

The communal nature of the whole thing started in the morning. Just like everyone else, we would pile in the car with the radio tuned to KOA so we could listen for closures. (Once, we were about to turn off Kipling to Jewell just as we heard that Jeffco was closed. Another time we got the news as we pulled into the parking lot.) Usually, by the time we reached the bottom of Green Mountain Drive the hope of getting to school on time was a distant memory and we were reconciled to the long wait going up the hill. Back in the seventies and eighties, four wheel drive was a rarity and so Green Mountain Drive become one long and slippery parking lot on snowy mornings.

This was all complicated by the fact that a goodly number of those futilely spinning their tires were beginning drivers with no clue how to deal with snow and ice. We would get out of our cars with mugs of hot coffee and talk to each other about the crisp weather and listen to the whirr of spinning tires as first hour slowly slid into second.

See, I've discovered something else I miss about teaching. Those were great times with great kids and colleagues. (The ones who weren't so great normally stayed home at any excuse.) I miss the anticipation of the night before. I miss convincing myself that we will get snowed out, so I can watch the football game instead of grading those essays. I miss waking in the middle of the night to look out the window at the snow. Smiles and relief if the snow is falling. Despair and existential nausea if the weather is clear. I miss hanging on the weather forecast's every word. I miss the manly feeling of driving your family safely across snow and ice in the dead of winter.

Now it just isn't the same. I don't have dreams about snowfall. I don't worry about my kids missing that all-important CSAP practice test. I'm neither disappointed nor relieved by the morning's weather. I make some coffee, shovel the walk so all the kids can get to class unobstructed, wait for the paper man to show, and play Scrabble on my iPhone. Weather? What weather?