WINTER in School

I see a lot of people complaining about the length and severity of this winter. The combination of cold and SNOW had made everyone I know wish for hot summer days. As my San Antonio Texas son says, “You don’t have to shovel the heat”

As a kid, I kind of enjoyed not having to go to school on “snow days”. Of course, living on a farm with a lane that drifted shut meant we weren’t staying inside when home. We had scoop shovels for loading grain, and they worked quite well for shoveling snow. At least that is what my parents thought as they sent my brothers and me to dig us out. Fortunately we lived almost at the end of the township, and we were the only place the snow plow could turn around. The same was true for the township to the north, so sometimes all we had to dig out was the piles left by the plows.

As an educator, winter became my curse, especially when it snowed. You do realize that SNOW is a four letter word, and we all know you are not supposed to use four letter words. As a principal, I repeated this often.

I had many bad experiences with snow. The most memorable was in the 1978-79 school term. I was teaching in Albany, and we received so much snow, it seemed the school was closed more often than open in January and February. It was during that year that the state of Illinois invented “Act of God” days. This happened because so many school districts ran out of snow days before the end of February. This meant school would have to stay into session well into the summer if there was no relief from the minimum required days of attendance.

My son, Scott, has a January birthday. His birthday that year was during the blizzard, and we couldn’t get out of town to buy him a present. Over the course of the winter, his grandparents were eventually able to come and see him, but on different weeks. His birthday was celebrated for about 3 weeks.

My wife, Connie, had been hired as a special education teacher aide in late November. Between the Christmas vacation and all of the snow I think she worked about one day a week for three months.

The snow was so bad, the drifts were higher than the intake vents for the heating system. The snow covered the vents, then as the heaters warmed the wall, water ran into the classroom for the melting snow.

The snow load on the roof was so bad, that the supporting rafters cracked over the classrooms down the hall from my room. When were able to have school, those classrooms were considered temporarily condemned and the students had to have language arts and math in rooms with better support. Fortunately for me, my science room only had the wet floor problem.

The kitchen on the other end of the building had a rack suspended from the ceiling. This held all of the pots and pans and large cooking utensils. The weight of the snow caused the rack to hang down until all of the suspended items were removed. The photos below were taken a full month after the biggest blizzard.

The only solution was to plow the snow off the roof. I remember our janitor, Casey, up on the roof with a snow blower clearing it enough so the rooms could be used. Hazel was constantly mopping up melting snow inside the building.

I did the same at my home, except instead of a snow blower I had to use my trusty scoop shovel with which I had so expertly learned how to handle as kid digging out our driveway.

In a way this year is like that year. Everyone felt the effect of too much winter. Unfortunately this was not the last time as an educator S**W would ruin my day.