Transcript
Speaker: Hola, buenas noches, Emily.
Speaker: Buenas noches.
Speaker: Bien, gracias.
Speaker: ¿Cómo estás?
Speaker: Bien, cansadito, but I'm ready.
Speaker: I'm here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, tonight we're going to have a special mini-sode just to keep something fresh in your ears and also to check in because I love talking with you, as always.
Speaker: Yes, a little micro episode.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So for our micro mini episode, we just thought it'd be cool to focus on topics that are kind of like fluffy and small, but... Literally.
Speaker: Literally for the one we're about to tackle.
Speaker: Fluffy small issue in education that actually...
Speaker: As in, we inevitably do find connections to, you know, macro systemic concerns.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Hot.
Speaker: Hot take.
Speaker: So I proposed this, so I'll introduce it.
Speaker: We're in the Northeast and we're having a snowstorm tomorrow.
Speaker: And so I'm keeping an eye out on those closings because even though I'm not teaching in schools right now, my husband does.
Speaker: So I'm hoping he gets to stay home.
Speaker: And I was reminded of a change and a shift in the way snow days happen.
Speaker: Where some schools, maybe most, I'm not sure how it is right now, but I know when it first started when in the days of COVID and online learning, I mean, not in the days of COVID as if it's past, but like COVID restrictions in schools, distance learning became more part of schools.
Speaker: And as such, snow days became distance learning days, as I'm sure we've all experienced in a lot of schools.
Speaker: And up here, especially that school year of 2020 to 2021, you know, like that first year everyone was back, but like there were a lot of modifications to how school was.
Speaker: There was not like a universal agreement about whether snow days should be snow days where kids didn't have to do work.
Speaker: They were just...
Speaker: you know, allowed to do whatever they wanted.
Speaker: And then there was another camp that thought, no, we need to save this day, especially because half the kids are in school, half the days, half are not.
Speaker: And what's the difference if they're learning online from the teachers at home or from the teachers in school, it doesn't matter.
Speaker: You know, like it can still be a day of learning.
Speaker: So we should make it a distance learning day, not a snow day.
Speaker: And it sparked a lot of debate at the time.
Speaker: Now I think it's just become normalized that a lot of schools do a distance learning day on a weather day when it's not physically safe to come to school.
Speaker: And I feel a hundred different ways about it.
Speaker: Oh, me too.
Speaker: Now that you're saying it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, from a teacher's perspective, I was obviously enraged that I was expected to teach on snow days because there were lots of concerns.
Speaker: Like one, I just thought it was like so tedious already to do online learning.
Speaker: It was very challenging to do 100% online for kids.
Speaker: I'm not sure what you've experienced, but.
Speaker: Yeah, it was not.
Speaker: It was not great.
Speaker: Yeah, it was challenging for them to be engaged.
Speaker: And I think Rafa and I both have a strong commitment to experiential, like hands-on learning and play learning, play-based learning.
Speaker: And in my mind, I know it's not the case for all children, but like snow days were a really magical kind of free day where you just got an unexpected gift of staying home and playing out in the snow all day.
Speaker: And, you know, it's like...
Speaker: Not all kids have access to a safe place to play outside and play in the snow, but a lot of kids can find a park or find a place to play.
Speaker: A lot of my kids, when I taught in Providence, missed snow days.
Speaker: They told me they missed them.
Speaker: This nostalgia for snow days...
Speaker: Stuck in some towns in the wealthy white town where my partner taught at the time, the principal came around or the superintendent came around and said, it's, you know, we're going to keep the spirit of a snow day.
Speaker: We're not doing distance learning days.
Speaker: We're going to let kids be kids outside.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: That was a pattern at private schools.
Speaker: That was the case.
Speaker: Not all, it's not ubiquitous, but many private schools I knew people taught at.
Speaker: Other wealthier majority white districts did this like keep the spirit of snow days alive kind of thing.
Speaker: And I, in my school, was told I had to teach online.
Speaker: I had to post something in my Google classroom and that administrators would be coming on and checking to make sure I was teaching.
Speaker: it was very par for the course of that year, especially pretending that everything was normal and nothing had changed.
Speaker: And this philosophy that like doing so is in the children's best interest because it kept continuity.
Speaker: It kept like
Speaker: the sameness.
Speaker: It kept high expectations, right?
Speaker: That was like a big buzzword that like we have high expectations for our learners and like, you know, they didn't say this, but the ethos was through sleep, through snow, like we will go and like learn, you know?
Speaker: And it's just like,
Speaker: I felt like as a kid growing up in New England, I didn't grow up anywhere else.
Speaker: I don't know what it was like, but that was like a rite of passage was like these days off to like where your parents like had to stay home because they couldn't leave, you know, and you just like had a day off from responsibility.
Speaker: I mean, school –
Speaker: Schools work.
Speaker: Kids deserve a break too.
Speaker: Those really unexpected moments of joy.
Speaker: I was talking to my neighbor today who was eight years old and he was telling me that he was so excited.
Speaker: He was hoping it was a snow day tomorrow.
Speaker: He's going to sleep with his pajamas inside out.
Speaker: There's something like...
Speaker: There's something like magical and just like about the unexpectedness of a snow day.
Speaker: You know, it's like, obviously there's some scary things that can go along with it, like scary weather patterns, but like, you know, I don't know.
Speaker: I just felt like the of coarseness of it all that, of course, my district already very punitive made us do on and like bent on surveilling us, like had this approach to snow days and hint, hint, nothing happened.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: on these snow days.
Speaker: Nobody did anything because also the other part of it was
Speaker: I had those concerns about the spirit of the snow day.
Speaker: And then also like a lot of my kids were learning from homes with poor internet connectivity.
Speaker: So it didn't matter.
Speaker: It's like distance synchronous learning was not easy for them.
Speaker: Their cameras would fade in and out.
Speaker: If there was bad weather and power was down, their internet would go out, you know?
Speaker: So it became this like exacerbation of like, you know, inequity and like, uh,
Speaker: just we didn't have the infrastructure to actually provide high quality synchronous online learning for kids you know in our school and so it just became like oh you missed a day because you weren't on school during the snow day you know um and i just am like i'm just exhausted that that's like still a thing that it's a distance learning day it's a day on not a day off you know yeah no i i feel like i talked a lot
Speaker: I resonate a lot with this idea of the spirit of a snow day.
Speaker: And I think about what about the spirit of a snow day attracts me.
Speaker: And I think it's like, so schools, by and large, are very much mirroring the capitalist system we live in, right?
Speaker: Where you're working, you're on a clock.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so snow days in many ways are like one of the were in some places still are one of those few places of like, wow, I can enjoy.
Speaker: Not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, and so like in that, in that talk of high expectations always bothers me because so many times it's high expectations of what, like,
Speaker: Of what?
Speaker: High expectations for children to deal with and have basically high expectations of children with very low expectations of the systems they work in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, what the hell?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just really annoying narrative.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's exacerbated by these things of, okay, yeah, come like hell or high water, like...
Speaker: we're going to have high expectations and instead of almost like accepting that like no that's work that needs the fact that there's such poor infrastructure is a bigger issue and not again I'm not trying to be like saying that we resign ourselves not doing anything but also like
Speaker: Accept things for what they are and then try to change things from there.
Speaker: Accept that, I don't know, improper funding has led to a situation where there's not a good electric grid, for example, or proper internet or such.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I am all about the spirit of a snow day and the spirit of having a high expectation of people being able to enjoy and benefit from downtime.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think, yeah, I think this whole snow days and distance learning or whatever cost and the context of like, especially with younger children and including middle school age is a little bit like,
Speaker: it's like work.
Speaker: It's like, like you were saying, like, it's like how work expects you to work many times.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just like the extra surveillance.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: It's almost easier.
Speaker: It is easier for administration to pop onto your call than it is for them to walk into your classroom because they're not in meetings all day.
Speaker: You know, their meetings probably got canceled or, you know, shifted around.
Speaker: Like all they have to do is hop on whenever you're not expecting it and, you know, see what you're doing.
Speaker: You know, I've had the experience of, you know, in again, that 2020 to 2021 school year, we had a two week,
Speaker: remote, you know, or not even too weak, a week long remote learning stint before Christmas.
Speaker: And
Speaker: it was like two or three days before the winter holiday break.
Speaker: And none of my kids were coming on.
Speaker: Like it was just, everyone was done.
Speaker: You know, we were all burned out emotionally and physically from this crazy year.
Speaker: And in the last like 20 minutes, one of my classes and admin came on and was like, you know, there was no children on the phone call.
Speaker: And I was just like sitting alone on a call and had to be like,
Speaker: yeah, no kids came.
Speaker: I don't know what to do.
Speaker: And I didn't say this, but it's like, I stopped calling their parents and like home, you know, three days ago.
Speaker: Like, this is my gift to them.
Speaker: You know, it's like, I don't care.
Speaker: Like, you know, and but it's like, what did your admin say?
Speaker: Oh, nothing.
Speaker: They were pretty done too.
Speaker: Thankfully, I had a very understanding and tired admin, but they had to check a box that said, I checked in on this person, this person, this person, this person, right?
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Yeah, it's just like evident to me that not much learning happens on these distance learning days.
Speaker: And there's this argument that, oh, you save days in the summer.
Speaker: It's like you don't have to take extra days into the summer.
Speaker: But we used to just build in like, well, you can have up to five school days and not miss, you know, not have to go into the summer.
Speaker: It's like these things have been built in for and it's just like –
Speaker: Having five extra distance learning days is not going to like close what some term the achievement debt or not achievement debt, the achievement gap, right?
Speaker: What I would call the achievement debt or Gloria Ladson Billings, like the amazing, you know, theorist who came up with and researcher who came up with culturally relevant pedagogy.
Speaker: She termed like we should think of,
Speaker: not the achievement gap, like, right about an achievement debt, but like what is owed to students of color.
Speaker: And either way you look at it, it's not going to be closed by, you know, five.
Speaker: I mean, also five, five extra days of work is five days that I'm not, and we're not resting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're tired.
Speaker: We're just more tired.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Listen to me.
Speaker: I'm losing my function as well.
Speaker: Does mi casita do snow days?
Speaker: Yeah, we go by the DOE.
Speaker: So New York City, DOE closes, we close.
Speaker: You could make an argument that it doesn't make as much sense because our families for the most part are local.
Speaker: Like you could walk.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: That being said, our whole team isn't local.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Think of if, and then it makes it tricky to have a policy of like, if the team is, if the team this year working this year is works in a night works in the neighborhood, it's like, yeah, that's not sustainable.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: But honestly, it's really few and far between.
Speaker: The DOE in New York City just doesn't close very reliably.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: Someone asked me yesterday, a friend of mine who's not a teacher, why is it so hard for them to close?
Speaker: And I'm like, well, there's lots of implications, one of which is that it's for a lot of people, especially in economically oppressed situations, that school is maybe we're going to get the most amount of heat and food in a day.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: Again, schools taking on the inequities that exist in the rest of society, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's not all about learning is what I'm saying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Speaking.
Speaker: I'm not trying to make a judgment on good or bad.
Speaker: Well, I do have a judgment.
Speaker: I don't think schools should be expected to do that because...
Speaker: How do I explain it?
Speaker: You do what you got to do in the short term, the reduced harm.
Speaker: But this idea that that's a long-term solution, you just have to keep doing it, and that's going to eventually lead to a solution that's more sustainable, that's delusional.
Speaker: And that's what's been done for so long.
Speaker: And so that's what I'm trying to... I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker: That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I think that also...
Speaker: my dis like my ire about like this, like what it would make me so mad about having to do a distance learning dance of just having a motherfucking snow day.
Speaker: Um, was that, um,
Speaker: This idea that, oh, we can still do school from home.
Speaker: It's like the whole argument against keeping schools open during COVID was that it like – because what you said, school is a social safety net.
Speaker: It's the only place kids have a full – might have like breakfast and lunch.
Speaker: It's the place where they might –
Speaker: have access to a comfortable environment, you know, in a day or a caring adult or an adult who's able to like advocate for them or something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's like, that's the argument for having kids come to school.
Speaker: That was a big part of it.
Speaker: And to me, what I was seeing was that
Speaker: we weren't doing any of that sociocultural, you know, work.
Speaker: It was all, not sociocultural, but like emotional, socioemotional work.
Speaker: It's like, oh no, I'm still just expected to teach academic, like, you know, like the common core standards for the day, like the, you know, whatever writing skill, whatever reading skill you needed for the day.
Speaker: It's like, that's what school is about in the most basic essence to a lot of
Speaker: people, you know, and to think that you can make, it just was contradictory.
Speaker: It's like, you can't have both be the, you can't force us to come into school under the guise of it's important for kids to be in school.
Speaker: And then also say, you can like do the same thing you do in schools at home, like from the computer and do a distance learning day.
Speaker: And you can't, whatever.
Speaker: It's clear like schools and teachers do so much more that is relational.
Speaker: And we're just like,
Speaker: that commitment to distance learning really solidified to me what some people's like ideas of school were that they're like a little factory, you know, just turning out filled, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, this is in Minnesota.
Speaker: We're at minute 17.
Speaker: We riffed on it good.
Speaker: We riffed.
Speaker: Yeah, I didn't expect to make the connections I did through when you brought it up first.
Speaker: So that wasn't interesting and exciting.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, if you have feelings, you can email us.
Speaker: at pedagogy of the distressed at gmail.com.
Speaker: And we'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you did anything really cool on a snow day, we'd love to hear about it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Let's celebrate snow days.
Speaker: Let's celebrate snow days.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, you go get some rest of the tools, your entire teacher.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And you too.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Pray for snow.
Speaker: Pray for snow day.
Speaker: Pray for snow for you.
Speaker: We're definitely not getting a snow day tomorrow.
Speaker: It's only three inches in New York City.
Speaker: So you put your PJs on inside out for us.
Speaker: Apparently not.
Speaker: That's what my eight-year-old neighbor said we needed to do.
Speaker: That's what I have to do then.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
Speaker: Bye Bye.
