Kaitlyn and Gala
This week was crazy. I don’t think spring break could have fallen in a more opportune spot. I couldn’t imagine starting another school week tomorrow.
Monday the roads were bad once again. We started school at 9:00 am, but no buses had arrived yet, so we only had students who walked to school. It’s always awkward to hold class in this type of situation. You don’t want to waste time with the kids who were there on time and are sitting in front of you (especially when you’ve had 20+ school days affected by weather already), but you can’t justify continuing on when over half your class is missing due to circumstances out of their own control. The first bus arrived about 30 minutes into the school day. Only one bus was working that day, so they had to drop the kids off and then return down town to pick up the rest. By 11:00 am the secretary announced that the bus full of the second group of kids was stuck, so they would be even later. By 11:30 am it was announced that the bus had turned around and would not be bringing anyone else to school. In addition, school would be let out at 2:10 pm to get the rest of the students home. Needless to say, it was a frustrating, unproductive day.
Tuesday and Wednesday we finally had some normal days of school. We started on time and stayed in school until our regular 3:12 pm dismissal. All of these bad weather days are started to blend together, but if I remember right, Tuesday we ended up having students in school until after 4:00 pm, because the buses got stuck on their way to the school to pick the kids up. Luckily, my last class of the day was filled with students who walked to school, so I didn’t have to do any entertaining.
Monday the roads were bad once again. We started school at 9:00 am, but no buses had arrived yet, so we only had students who walked to school. It’s always awkward to hold class in this type of situation. You don’t want to waste time with the kids who were there on time and are sitting in front of you (especially when you’ve had 20+ school days affected by weather already), but you can’t justify continuing on when over half your class is missing due to circumstances out of their own control. The first bus arrived about 30 minutes into the school day. Only one bus was working that day, so they had to drop the kids off and then return down town to pick up the rest. By 11:00 am the secretary announced that the bus full of the second group of kids was stuck, so they would be even later. By 11:30 am it was announced that the bus had turned around and would not be bringing anyone else to school. In addition, school would be let out at 2:10 pm to get the rest of the students home. Needless to say, it was a frustrating, unproductive day.
Tuesday and Wednesday we finally had some normal days of school. We started on time and stayed in school until our regular 3:12 pm dismissal. All of these bad weather days are started to blend together, but if I remember right, Tuesday we ended up having students in school until after 4:00 pm, because the buses got stuck on their way to the school to pick the kids up. Luckily, my last class of the day was filled with students who walked to school, so I didn’t have to do any entertaining.
The mukluks that Kaitlyn sold
Thursday was an early release day due to parent teacher conferences. Our school is known for having poor turnouts for parent teacher conference, so our principal tried to do everything he could to entice people to come up. He provided a bus for transportation and held a potluck and a bazaar immediately following the conferences. I had 2 parents show up. Tim had 5. (Tim teaches middle and high school, so he has a twice the pool of students and parents to pull from.) Sometimes I wonder why we even bother holding parent teacher conferences. On the plus side, I made 5 pairs of mukluk slippers to sale at the bazaar. They didn’t all sale on Thursday night, but they were all sold by Saturday.
Kaitlyn and the snowshoeing students
Friday we had an early release day again. I’m not sure exactly why: perhaps to kick off spring break. Although, if that were the case, it was kind of ruined by the Saturday school that we had because of a day of school being weathered canceled last week.
Saturday school was a bit of a joke. I knew attendance was going to be pretty low. Firstly, it’s Saturday school . . . school on a Saturday; would you go? Secondly, next week is spring break and many people already had plans to leave town or simply just sleep in. To make attendance worse, the roads were bad once again. We have so much snow that every time the wind blows at all, the roads become drifted over and our snow removal equipment is all breaking down. We ended up having an hour delay to school. The plow was working on getting the road cleared when it broke down at about 9:30 am. At this point, it was obvious that getting a bus to the school was impossible. My principal did not want to cancel school because all the staff had already woken up early and gotten to school on a Saturday. No one wants to repeat that. So our late start Saturday school ended up being a late start optional attendance day of Saturday school. Regardless of school being optional, we still had about 10 high school students show up and, even more surprising, they stayed the entire day. (I so would have been out of there after lunch-time if I had been them.) At 10:00 am, when school started, I took all 4 high school students that had shown up by that point snowshoeing. I told my students to walk toward 3-hill. We walked for about 30 minutes and then I told them it was time to head back. None of them had ever been snowshoeing, but they seemed to like it. It was a beautiful day and it was above zero (2 or 3 degrees Fahrenheit). I did return with ice in my eye lashes and eye brows, but that has become common place.
Saturday school was a bit of a joke. I knew attendance was going to be pretty low. Firstly, it’s Saturday school . . . school on a Saturday; would you go? Secondly, next week is spring break and many people already had plans to leave town or simply just sleep in. To make attendance worse, the roads were bad once again. We have so much snow that every time the wind blows at all, the roads become drifted over and our snow removal equipment is all breaking down. We ended up having an hour delay to school. The plow was working on getting the road cleared when it broke down at about 9:30 am. At this point, it was obvious that getting a bus to the school was impossible. My principal did not want to cancel school because all the staff had already woken up early and gotten to school on a Saturday. No one wants to repeat that. So our late start Saturday school ended up being a late start optional attendance day of Saturday school. Regardless of school being optional, we still had about 10 high school students show up and, even more surprising, they stayed the entire day. (I so would have been out of there after lunch-time if I had been them.) At 10:00 am, when school started, I took all 4 high school students that had shown up by that point snowshoeing. I told my students to walk toward 3-hill. We walked for about 30 minutes and then I told them it was time to head back. None of them had ever been snowshoeing, but they seemed to like it. It was a beautiful day and it was above zero (2 or 3 degrees Fahrenheit). I did return with ice in my eye lashes and eye brows, but that has become common place.
Snowshoeing with Jas, Roderick, Jeremiah, and Dawn
We had lunch an hour early on Saturday and then spent a long time in the gym. I ended up spending the afternoon playing basketball with the 5th and 6th graders. Tim watched the Blindside with some students in his classroom. I guess Saturday school could have been worse.
Tim turned 30 on Friday! I felt bad that I couldn’t make a bigger deal of it. It’s hard to do a lot for birthdays when we both work full-time and we have to work on the weekend. Unfortunately for Tim, I was pretty boring on Friday evening because I didn’t feel very well. I was going to make Tim a steak dinner but ended up taking a nap first. I attempted cooking steak when I woke up, but Tim ended up cooking his steak dinner himself. I did surprise him with his birthday presents though. I got him a back massager and an iphone 3G. I think he was pretty excited, even if it was an older model. Saturday evening, we had a potluck for Tim’s birthday. We only had 8 people show up because so many people were out of town for spring break or just exhausted from our long week of work. It was fun though.
Tim turned 30 on Friday! I felt bad that I couldn’t make a bigger deal of it. It’s hard to do a lot for birthdays when we both work full-time and we have to work on the weekend. Unfortunately for Tim, I was pretty boring on Friday evening because I didn’t feel very well. I was going to make Tim a steak dinner but ended up taking a nap first. I attempted cooking steak when I woke up, but Tim ended up cooking his steak dinner himself. I did surprise him with his birthday presents though. I got him a back massager and an iphone 3G. I think he was pretty excited, even if it was an older model. Saturday evening, we had a potluck for Tim’s birthday. We only had 8 people show up because so many people were out of town for spring break or just exhausted from our long week of work. It was fun though.
Walking home in the blizzard
Our friend, Heather, took this picture as we left her house last week. We had gone to her house to wait for the storm to die down before we walked home. If you look hard, you can see Tim and I in the distance (left of the middle of the picture). Below are some pictures of the school, a shed and a connex next to the school, and the road. This can give you a good idea of how much snow we've gotten this winter.
