Like many people here in the district, I have been enjoying the occasional snow day in the more frigid months, but in recent years, that has seemed to change. Where have snow days gone? And what have they been replaced with? Those are my thoughts exactly.
What is an AMI day? An AMI day is used when there are situations that put students in danger of getting to the school or administration buildings. AMI stands for Alternative Method of Instruction, AKA ruining snow days.
If someone were to ask, I feel that some kids would rather have no school whatsoever on snow days, and I happen to be one of that group. This ruins the age-old story of waiting late into the night, tuning into the news channel, and hoping your parents get the call about school being canceled. Yet from my point of view, the district may seem to think that only 30-minute classes over Google Meet are just as beneficial to make up that missed time. I beg to differ.
The consensus I can gather from those who believe in AMI days goes like this: “It means we don’t have extra days eating into summer!” Believe it or not, I love summer break just like anyone else, but we could overcome this would just be to build on snow days, and when we use the allotted amount, we could switch over to AMI days.
To further this, an article written by The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said, “Beginning in the school year 2020-21, a local education agency (LEA) will not be required to make up school hours that are lost or canceled due to exceptional or emergency circumstances (up to 36 hours) if the LEA implements an Alternative Methods of Instruction…” To contrast this, we could instead have those three days dedicated to snow/ice days and anything after that can be AMI days. This brings the finite balance of the classic snow day but with the added bonus of not eating into our precious summer. This is how it should be yet, here we are.
This leaves me with hope for the future, but in the meantime, students such as myself will just have to spend two hours of the day playing Kahoots or answering snow-themed trivia questions that we only really get 20 minutes for. I say this because when it comes time to transition between Google Meets, there is a five to 10-minute gap between students closing out their current call and trying to find the right information and join codes, leaving a mere two-thirds of the time for our classes.
Even if the district maintains the current means of snow day plans, there is hope. Some teachers around OHS try to keep in the spirit of the classic day off by not requiring students to join a Meet and instead ask us to snap and submit a photo of the student doing a fun challenge or activity in the snow for attendance for the day.
After all is said, I am still a strong believer in the true snow day off, yet I am thankful for the teachers who try to make it worthwhile for students.
This article was revised after evaluation of the misinterpretation of sources and data.
