The Best Snow Experience Ever

One day, a couple of weeks after I started working, I read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to my students. In case you haven't read it, the storyline goes that there is a town, Chewandswallow, where it rains food at appropriate meal times. The residents of this town simply go outside and pick up their food (no need for grocery stores). Things are fine for years and years until they experience a gradual shift in weather patterns where the food items falling from the sky get bigger and bigger. Big piles of pancakes squash houses and ketchup flows in the streets. The residents of Chewandswallow decide they can no longer live there and thus come to the world we know where it rains water. Towards the end of the story, the relocated residents of Chewandswallow experience their first snowy winter. The author assumes that everyone knows what snow looks like, and when I read that part to my students, one of them piped up.

"What snow?"

My jaw almost hit the floor. Then I remembered I'm in Louisiana where everyone can count the number of times it has snowed here on one hand. People have told me that the last time it snowed here was on Christmas Day the year before Katrina hit. The time before that was in 1989. I read in the paper that the time before that was 1963.

Thursday morning I walked to work because the forecast said it would be sleeting. Just as a side note, one teacher told me that people don't even know what the word sleet means, so the radio DJs say, "rain and ice." Once at school, I reported for morning duty in the cafeteria (if the weather is warm enough, we meet outside). For the first few minutes, it was drizzling outside and I heard reports of active snow fall on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Then people told me their stories of the last time it snowed. Ms. R. said that it took her four hours to drive the 5 mile trek home because of the ice and the fact that people don't know how to drive in that kind of weather down here. Mr. D. told me that he only saw it for about 5 minutes where he was. Mrs. J. told me that her daughter doesn't even remember the snow because she was so young. Ms. C. remarked that the snow on Christmas Day of 2004 was an omen of bad things to come the following summer.

Then we looked out the window. Was it snowing here? Now? Nah, couldn't be. Wait, it looked a little slow to be rain....it is! It's snowing!!

The energy in the cafeteria raised up a notch. Some kids ran to press their faces to the window. Mrs. J. and I looked at each with big eyes. I started jumping up and down. It was snowing! I didn't have to miss the weather changes after all! Mrs. J. just smiled.

I turned to see what the principal was going to do. I saw him leading a crowd of students, teachers, and parents outside. My students still had their faces pressed to the glass, mesmerized.

"Let's go outside!"

They turned around so quickly and with such delight across their faces that my heart melted on the spot (ha ha ha). I ran back to the classroom to get my coat and camera, and jumped around for the next half hour snapping pictures of my students and some of their parents enjoying the snow. Everyone was laughing delightfully. The level of happiness was so high, it was almost like we told the kids they could eat ice cream all day long.

Eventually we had to start school, so we went inside. It was nearly impossible to focus on anything academic. I personally had a hard time focusing and so did the kids. My teaching partner and I had to bribe them with a surprise (going outside) so they would pay attention to the lesson. Finally it was time for recess and they rushed outside with jumping bean exuberance. This time there was a layer of snow on the ground, which meant now they could truly play in the snow. Wow!

I got a couple sloppy snowballs thrown at me. It broke my heart to tell them that they couldn't throw snow balls....at people. One of my girls plopped herself down in the mushy mess to make a snow angel. I had to coax her out of the puddle she was creating with a snowball to throw at the wall. Everyone was happy and having a great time. All the teachers were snapping pictures and smiling. It was wonderful!

When it was nearly time to go in, my students started to complain that they were cold. Their fingers were cold; their feet were cold; their coat wasn't thick enough. We went inside, and almost instantly, they started yelling and screaming because their hands were burning. They were warming up too quickly! Many of my students have autism, which means they are sensory-oriented, so this new sensation was especially peculiar and uncomfortable to them. We ran their fingers under cold water, but that didn't do the trick. Then we realized that every single student's shoes were soaking wet. We marched back to the classroom and had everyone take off their shoes and socks. For some reason, the radiators haven't been hot in our classroom yet, so we put their socks on the radiator in the staff bathroom, paper clipping names to sock owners so there wouldn't be confusion later. Needless to say, we didn't get anything academic in for at least an hour, but that doesn't mean they weren' t learning!

An hour later, the snow turned to rain. By the end of the school day, it was sort of sunny, the playground was dry, and the snow was gone. By Saturday, it was in the 60s.

For a while though, everyone was happy. People in Wisconsin aren't quite that happy when it snows, so it was truly, the best snow experience ever.