Letter: A Lesson from Covid and Snow Storms

Dear TLS,

Many speculate as to why covid came upon us. Some said we need to be mechazek in limud haTorah, shemiras halashon, bein adam lchaveiro, smaller simchos… etc… I can’t make such interpretations of hashgacha with certainty. But what I do want to point out is a very practical lesson we can take from this entire time period. Perhaps if we learn this lesson, in some way we can at least take some benefit from the virus in spite of all the suffering..

While the last few winters have been mild, many of us recall winters not too long ago when it seemed there were more snow days than school days. Indeed, there was talk of extending the school year some years to make up for those lost days if I recall correctly.

Here we are now mid winter of 2021 and the first heavy snow storm. One fully missed school day this week, and today the busing balagan is upon us. It would be great if schools would evaluate relying more on distance learning instead or together with the current situation. How many hundreds of thousands of hours of learning could have been saved yesterday if classes went to conference calls?

Back in the covid lockdown when this went on for weeks and months at a time, it was hard to maintain momentum and focus. But if kids know within a few days they will be back in school, they can hold on and we could maintain more hours of limudei kodesh and chol on days like these.

All the above goes for days when school is entirely canceled. How about a day like today though? The mishmosh of bussing, parents late to work, kids coming in thrown off schedule… Is it accomplishing more for chinuch by having kids wait out hours in the cold and wet for a bus that ‘is coming’? What if kids were inside, davening, and instead of parents getting texts with schedules for delays, we got a notice about where to call in? While considering this, we don’t have to do it all or nothing. Schools can develop a policy and various plans. Give parents a description of the protocol for various plans beforehand and then just go to Plan A, Plan B. Maybe one plan is that just younger grades will have home learning, while older grades will continue regularly. This may benefit parents as well and lessen the traffic on the road.

I’m not suggesting any of the above as hard and fast eitzos. And no plan will be perfect for everyone. My point is that if we learned from covid about being shomrei lashon, tznuyim in our simchas and all the other points discussed over months, then we can also take a practical lesson on how we can year after year utilize distance learning to supplement our chinuch in times like these. Let the mosdos figure out, each one, what works best for them and their parent body.

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11 COMMENTS

  1. wouldn’t work for us. we don’t have 7 extra phones…
    and a one hour conference doesn’t compare to 3.5 hours in the classroom, which is the amount of school the Cheder had yesterday.

  2. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with kids having a snow day and not having to learn a few times in the winter. They need the break a look forward to it.
    Perhaps if the storm was much worse and the streets weren’t cleared up after a few days then remote learning could be an option. But let’s not jump to it after one snow day.
    Didn’t you like snow days when you were a kid??
    Today the roads were packed and slippery. I would have been fine for my kids to stay home.

  3. monday most people had the option not to go to work so call is nice idea but tuesday the roads were clear so parents need to be at work so cant keep kids home maybe no bussing was good still

  4. I agree 100% let kids enjoy themselves and have a blast in the snow! You only get one chance to be a kid and snow days give them great memories!

  5. Stop pointing fingers at the schools. If you’re so concerned about the missed hours of learning why don’t you learn with your kids when they’re home or hire someone privately? I think what most parents learned from COVID is that remote learning isn’t really effective.

  6. Shagas Aryeh had a beautiful message on their snow hotline yesterday giving the boys a day ‘off’ from school but stating very clearly that it is not a day off from being a mentsch and that there are special opportunities specifically on this day to look for where the boys can do different kinds of mitzvos (helping at home, bein Adam l’chaveiro, etc.) and they should look for those opportunities to do the ‘snow day mitzvos’.
    Perhaps this should be the message for all ‘snow days’. Let the kids have fun in the snow and work on their middos at the same time.
    Kudos to Shagas Aryeh (I am not a parent in the school but a friend told me and I had to call the hotline to listen 🙂

  7. I don’t want to talk about school/yeshiva per se, but about what COVID can teach us, and I’m afraid it is a lesson that is lost on most people.

    The pandemic forced us to curtail tefilah and limud haTorah bitzibbur, and it has forced us (or should have forced us) to alter how we perform these communal obligations up to and including today.

    But instead many people ran to make minyanim outdoors at a time early on when it was unclear whether that was even safe. Still others tried to secretly have yeshiva or school when it was definitely unsafe and illegal. And many others still to this day persist in having davening and learning in shul/yeshiva with no COVID safety in place.

    It has been stated by doctors, the CDC, and we see from experience having lost many precious neshomas that what we are doing is clearly endangering ourselves and others. This cannot be what HaShem wants from us.

    HaShem wants us to serve Him. There are times when we can do that leChatchila and there are times when we can only discharge are religious obligations in a Bdi’eved fashion. We have to believe that when the leChatchila option is not available that HaShem accepts what we do BdiEved under trying circumstances.

    The lesson learned is that we should not slavishly carry out our religious duties, but rather at each juncture weigh what the proper response is.

    Yes, it is hard but HaShem wants us to be a thinking people, cognizant of our actions and repercussions at every moment of our lives.

    COVID is a nisayon. HaShem placed it upon us. I believe he will ultimately judge us on how we conducted ourselves.

  8. The anonymous writer of this beautiful letter chose to focus on how remote learning can be of benefit on snow days. I hope the oilom realizes that distance learning was unthinkable before covid. One might even regard the remote learning option as an unanticipated positive result of the pandemic.

    Notwithstanding this small positive aspect, I 1000% agree with Simcha (#7 above) that this pandemic has mostly been a huge Nisayon. Each of us will ultimately be judged not just by WHETHER we survived it, but by HOW we survived it. Were we careful to not endanger others? Did our hislahavus to be m’sameach choson v’kalla lead us to dance in an unsafe manner which endangered other people, including several who are known to have died as a result (this is a fact)? Did we privately or publicly ridicule others who were trying to protect themselves and were following guidelines that we “knew” were ridiculous (I witnessed this)? Did we try to convince friends or family to stop following safety guidelines because we thought they were silly and too cumbersone (I know of such examples)? Did we daven in “masking” shuls but refuse to wear masks ourselves, even though we knew or should have known that this is not only selfish and inconsiderate, but also an Issur D’Oraisa (mekoros available upon request)?

  9. Our job as parents and teachers is not to make perfect situation for our children . we often forget that children learn just as much from being forced to figure out how to handle a snow day walking into class late et cetera et cetera as they do from the actual lessons . we all grew up with snow days disastrous mornings and what one might call impediments to real learning but that is in fact where most of the learning takes place. And how we the parent handle this upend to our schedule is what they will really learn from the most.

  10. The teachers are very busy at home on snow days taking care of their families there is no way they can be on the phone for a few hours at a time while all the kids need and want their attention. Besides most families do not have enough phones for all the kids to be on the conference at once and also personally as a mother the conference call just add pressure to what should be a chilled out snow day.

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