2 Hour Delay

There are definitely pros and cons to 2 hour delays (as there is for just about anything in life). I must say I think I enjoyed sleeping in as much as my students did. Let's be honest, students would most likely have a difficult time developing a con list for 2 hour delay. However, as an (almost) teacher I easily developed a con list of the two main downfalls of delays in my opinion.

1. Plans and Time

Although I was not the one that personally had to create a new schedule that accounted for the 2 hour delay it still effected my plans. Some of the lessons were shortened and some just had to be completely skipped. Now I have to decide if I want to work some of the missed activities into my plans for the rest of the week or if I will just wait to do them another week. This is why flexibility is such an important quality for teachers to have. You can't control everything that goes on in the school day, week or year. It was out of my control that 2 hours of my planned out day were lost. You simply cannot achieve 7 hours of planned lessons and activities in 5 hours. However, if anyone reading this discovers a way to warp time, I'm sure all teachers would enjoy learning the secret.

2. Behavior

I could go on about this forever. This was the first delay of the year and I had never witnessed student behavior after a 2 hour delay before from a teacher's perspective. I honestly think a few times I stood with my jaw dropped in amazement of the lack of self-control the students had. Not one of the students went the entire day without having their behavior re-corrected more than once. There was a straight hour where all of the students could not stop laughing. I don't know, and I don't even think they know what they were laughing at. It was definitely a disruption to the lessons that were taking place. An additional issue was having to give instructions multiple times before anything was accomplished. I am still shocked at how some students that we rarely ever have behavior issues with acted today. My co-op was more frustrated with what was going on than shocked. She explained how this is extremely common across all grade levels and to expect a re-occurrence when the next one takes place.

This is a prime example of weighing your pros and cons list. Would I wish for a delay? I'm not sure. On most days probably not. However, it all will depend how strongly my pros side is effected by my need for sleep.