The Power of a Well Placed Spoon

I will always remember my first snow day. I was in 7^th grade and had recently moved, in the middle of the school year, to Newton, Massachusetts from Oberlin, Ohio. It was a day like many others that winter. My mother insisted that I bundle up against the cold and snow for my 20 minute walk to school. As the new kid, I hadn’t yet found a friend with whom to share my journey, so I trudged alone through the snow along Washington Street to Warren Junior High. Upon arriving, I discovered that the front door to the school was locked. Warren was a classic American junior high school building – it’s now high-end condos – with a wide set of stairs leading up to a grand entrance. Although it was odd that the main entrance was locked, I didn’t think anything of it until I tried several other doors with the same result. Many things ran through my mind. Is it a holiday? Could I have come to school on Saturday by mistake? I can’t just go home, because my mother is never going to believe me! After checking all the doors again, I eventually noticed the empty parking lot and realized I had no choice but to head home. It was only after my mother called a neighbor that we learned about snow days. I was instantly a fan and, like every other kid I knew, learned the ritual of sitting by the TV or radio to listen for my town to be on the list of closed schools at the sight of a single flake of snow.

As a teacher I remained an ardent supporter of the well-placed snow day. They often seemed to come at just the right time, when everyone needed a break. As I moved into administration, I scoffed at my heads of school who resisted, agonized over, and complained about snow days. After all, what can you do about the weather? Fast forward a couple of decades. I now hold the awesome responsibility of deciding when and when not to have a snow day. My initiation to calling snow days took place early in my tenure as head of Elmwood Franklin School. I had barely settled into my new office when Buffalo was struck by The October Storm of 2006, leading to six days off in a row and having to dip into the winter break to reclaim two school days. Talk about giving with one hand and taking with the other. After assuring me that Buffalo’s weather reputation was largely over blown before I took the job, I think my board of trustees was afraid I might quit right then and there.

The glamour of being up every hour or so all night long to look out the window whenever snow is predicted has long since worn off. The 5am phone calls to my colleagues at Nichols and Buffalo Seminary have similarly become old. What never seems to fade is my fascination with the lengths that students – and some adults – will go to “influence” the weather. I already knew about spoons under the pillow and inside out pajamas. This year I’ve learned that backward pajamas work too, and that flushing ice cubes down the toilet and pencils in the freezer work "every time" according to some students. And if those methods don’t work or the proper tools aren’t available, many resort to the tried and true snow dance. Of course, I always hear about these tricks when they work. I know that many kids, mine included, almost always wear their pajamas inside out, just in case, but I never hear about it when it doesn’t work. EFS is luckier than most schools. It seems that we have a few snow day savants in the student body and on the faculty, who believe they possess a supernatural ability to predict when a snow day is coming. Maybe from now on I’ll just call them instead of waking up early.