On the week of January 16, 2024, students returned to school after having their Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. holiday where they were met with a district wide internet outage, which led an uneventful day without socializing since no one had access to their cell phones.
That same day is when temperatures started to drop, along with heavy rainfall, resulting in all neighborhood streets and main roads getting sheeted with ice overnight, which forced Tahoma to close all campuses for not one, but two days.
After coming back from such an unexpected string of events, a couple members of our staff reflected on the ordeal. I asked them if they had any difficulties with the road conditions when trying to drive out and here are their responses.
Leadership teacher Mrs. O’Leary talked about her commute on Friday morning saying, “the street was very icy. Excessive braking was necessary, but afterwards especially when leaving school, all was fine.”
She then shared how she bounced back after we had such an eventful week where we had no internet for a full day on Tuesday then getting iced out from school.
I asked her, “how did you feel about all this?” and she responded, “it was definitely interesting. It reminds us as teachers and students that life throws us a curveball and we need to learn how to adjust with it and go on with our lives instead of getting upset, and as someone who likes to have control, it’s a great reminder that it’s okay, and for students these snow days offered more time to catch up on studying for finals,” this is how she also expresses the pros and cons of these cancellations.
Social Studies Teacher, Mr. Seger also had a similar take in his response to my question on how he felt when coming in for work on Thursday where there was originally going to be a two hour delay, then getting notified shortly after of another closure. In his words, “I felt perfectly fine, some things were out of our control, even though I made it to work with no problems, the safety for others is always a top priority.”
I also asked him “do you think this has affected preparation time for finals and have you made changes for yours?” and he said, “it did make an impact, with having the holiday on Monday, internet out on Tuesday, and two days canceled we made fitting accommodations for it. For educational purposes, you need to be able to adapt and control when something like this happens.”
A lot of other people that I talked about this with mainly had similar takes on this. Since we are still in the winter season until March, it is important to stay prepared for such circumstances such as inclement weather.
Times like these can be frustrating, but this is also apart of life where you’ll need to make adjustments for things that happen out of your control.
