Snow days are a surprise break in the middle of the week that students and teachers use to catch up on sleep and work. The issue with snow days is that they are unexpected so there is no way to plan ahead for them.

“Every day is full just as is and then when there are snow days we have to sometimes be creative about how to still cover everything that we want to get done,” science department head, Brenda Zabel, said.

With snow days, teachers have to try their best to not get behind in their curriculum and sometimes that means assigning homework on snow days. Zabel said it is easy to do this in this day and age because of the technology Westside provides to students and staff. Teachers can send out emails or post to Blackboard and Google Classroom.

“I understand they want us to stay caught up but I think in some situations we should be allowed to have a day off from school,” junior Katelyn Allen said. “Snow days are a good day to get caught up on stuff we already have.”

Zabel said a lot of work goes into teachers adjusting to try and stay on track while having an unplanned break in the middle of the school year.

“It depends on what it is but sometimes if it is a large group and we’re trying to deliver the same information that we would have had there been large group, we try and sit down and make a recording of it to post for students,” Zabel said. “I know this is not ideal as a student to learn from a recording but it’s better than not sharing the information at all and getting further and further behind.”

There are many different types of homework that students may get assigned on snow days.

“I know I’ve had to teach myself math on snow days to stay caught up but it has a reverse effect because I don’t have a teacher to teach me,” Allen said. “I’ve also had to do projects.”

Teachers said they use this day to not only make sure students stay caught up with the schedule, but also to grade, lesson plan, and rearrange the calendar to work around the snow day.

“Sometimes it takes awhile to rearrange the calendar especially because we’re at home,” Zabel said. “Although we don’t meet in person, we are still able to call or FaceTime to try and rearrange stuff.”

Teachers put in a lot of time to make sure students stay caught up when Westside has snow days. Snow days come with responsibilities in order to not get behind in the crammed schedule that classes have.