School Makes ‘Snow Days’ Thing of the Past – ‘To Be Honest, There’s Been Some Grumbling’

As a kid, snow days were the best thing that ever happened in the winter, next to Christmas. Now, one Minnesota school is making the inevitable snow days a thing of the past.

Gee, thanks, technology.

St. Cloud Cathedral high school principal Lynn Grewing has turned to technology to make sure students get their work done, learn the days lesson, and more importantly, keeping them from picking up the XBox One controllers for hours on end.

Although the 13" of early winter snow St. Cloud received was, in fact, enough to close the school doors earlier this week, Grewing saw it as an opportunity to test the new system. Making sure the teachers of the 7th thru 12th graders had the homework assignments posted on the school website, each student was responsible for logging in and completing their assignments and lesson plans on their laptops and iPads.

The math teacher even put up videos to walk students through solving problems.

This is what we will be doing every single snow day going forward. I'll be honest. There has been some grumbling." - St. Cloud Cathedral high school principal Lynn Grewing

Students of Cathedral, which has provided all its students with high-end laptops, agreed that it's better to work from home during a blizzard than to make up days in the summer.

It looks like this new program of at-home curriculum has also captured the attention of Iowa school officials in a less high-tech fashion. Iowa public schools found a way to work around students without computer or Internet access at home. They get sent home with "blizzard bags" of homework the day before potentially bad weather hits.

New York lawmakers are working on retooling state law so these "virtual class" days count toward the state's 180-day school day mandate.

Next snow storm my kids may be asking, "Do you want to build a snowman?" The answer just may be, "I can't...I've got to do my homework."

Unless your student is a talented multi-tasker...

source: The Weather Channel