WEEKS 27 & 28: Snow day...sort of

Sorry for the 2 week hiatus. I was swamped with everything I had to do to prepare and execute my upper level IB exams. This week's post will include the hours from both week 27 (Feb 24-Mar 2) and week 28 (Mar 3 - Mar 9).

Anyone who grew up in Minnesota (or most northern states, for that matter) has experienced the great holiday known as the Snow Day. We've all had the exciting feeling at 10pm when we look out our windows and then cross-check what we are seeing with what the weather channel is predicting for the rest of the night. Will they call the day off the next morning?? For Minnesotans, who are pretty hard-core and are generally prepared to handle large amounts of snow in short amounts of time, the thought of a Snow Day usually ends up being wishful thinking.

And that's what happened Tuesday morning for Minneapolis students. 

Mother Nature dumped so much snow on Minnesota that nearly the whole southern part of the state got a snow day. But Minneapolis and St. Paul did not cancel school. There is a good reason for this; Minneapolis has over 30,000 students in its district alone, so to cancel school is a huge deal for many families, especially those families with elementary age children where the parents work (they would have to find a babysitter very quickly). 

So what happens when we have a snowy day without an actual Snow Day? I got stuck on my way in to work twice, and when I arrived our principal announced at our staff meeting (that wasn't canceled) that we had 6 teachers out who didn't have subs. In my first hour, I have 29 students on my roster. When class started, I had 4 students in my classroom. They were supposed to take a test that day, but I couldn't give a test when only 4 students were there for the whole hour. As more and more students started strolling in, I would have had to go over the instructions 10-15 times, and I wouldn't have been able to keep track of who had how much time already. So I postponed the test for 1st hour and made something up on the spot. Because I didn't want my classes to be in different places (any teacher knows that this can be stressful), I ended up postponing the test for all of my classes. So in reality, we didn't get a snow day, but we sort of did...

My hours for week 27:

Date	Start	End	Total Hours
2/24/2013	5:30 PM	6:45 PM	1.25
	8:45 PM	11:15 PM	2.5
2/25/2013	7:45 AM	6:30 PM	10.75
2/26/2013	7:45 AM	6:30 PM	10.75
	9:30 PM	11:00 PM	1.5
2/27/2013	7:45 AM	5:30 PM	9.75
2/28/2013	7:45 AM	8:15 PM	12.5
3/1/2013	8:00 AM	12:15 PM	4.25
3/2/2013	1:30 PM	3:00 PM	1.5
	4:00 PM	5:30 PM	1.5
Total			56.25

My hours for week 28:

Date	Start	End	Total Hours
3/3/2013	6:45 PM	8:30 PM	1.75
3/4/2013	7:30 AM	4:45 PM	9.25
3/5/2013	7:30 AM	4:15 PM	8.75
3/6/2013	7:45 AM	5:30 PM	9.75
3/7/2013	7:15 AM	5:45 PM	10.5
3/8/2013	8:00 AM	4:00 PM	8
	6:15 PM	8:15 PM	2
3/9/2013	9:15 AM	10:30 AM	2.25
Total			52.25