Snow Bag Days

by Haley Strom

Snow Bag days are the new thing here at North Attleboro High School. In hopes to eliminate having to make up snow days at the end of the year, the thought was that giving students paper copies of work will allow us to count the day as a day in school.

Many people believe that there is no point to Snow Bags, whereas others seem to feel as if it will be beneficial to students by eliminating snow days and keeping us in the school mode. I strongly believe that being given “Snow Bags” for snow days is a complete waste of time.

The purpose of a Snow Bag is to continue the education for students, even when we are interrupted with no power. When creating this plan, the idea behind it was that we wouldn’t need to make-up a snow day if students are actively learning through a Snow Bag Day.

In my opinion, Snow Bag’s are just busy work. They are more of a burden than anything else to me. The idea for a Snow Bag was to make it so we can actively participate in schoolwork activities, even when we lose power. I feel as if many students are going to choose not to complete their work, as it is unrelated to what we are learning about in school.

To be fair, many students have household responsibilities during a snowstorm, including myself. We have a long driveway that my dad takes care of with his snowblower, but my job is to shovel off the front deck, side patio, and the walkway. If I need to be working on schoolwork during a snowstorm and I am unable to help my family with household chores, then it is taking away from a custom of shoveling snow on snow days.

Also, creating Snow Bag’s to eliminate having to make up snow days at the end of the year takes away from our senior privileges. In previous years, seniors did not have to make up snow days. This year, having Snow Bags makes it so nobody has to make up snow days. I find this unfair because although us seniors are already losing out on many fun senior activities, this was a privilege that myself and many others had been looking forward to since freshman year.

When interviewing senior Olivia Etienvre, she explained how she felt about Snow Bags. She said, “I think there is no point to Snow Bags. It is just more work that will take time to thoroughly complete.” 

Agreeing with her, senior Emily Manning believes that she isn’t going to be able to experience the whole snow day experience. She said, “Living with many young kids around my house, I enjoy being able to play in the snow with them on snow days. If both myself and my neighbors have a Snow Bag full of work to do, we aren’t going to be able to build a snowman, which we enjoy doing on snow days.”

Although I find Snow Bags pointless, many others find it beneficial to a student’s education. From a parents perspective, Lynda Strom said, “I think with all the craziness going on this year, I think Snow Bags will keep a students mind going, even on their days at home.”

Many people might agree with her, but I believe that a Snow Bag is just a form of busy work and will be completely irrelevant to our topic in the classroom.

As we may be able to experience our first snow day of the year this coming week, a lot of people are stressing to get their Snow Bag work printed out and ready to go.