A Snow Day and Other Gifts

 Sometimes the best gifts are the unexpected ones.

I haven't written about my teaching lately because I've been so preoccupied with the conferences I've attended. As a result, I've been feeling a bit behind on providing feedback on all the AQs I facilitate. This past week was scheduled to be another jam-packed one, with meetings and parent/teacher interviews (maybe we should call them student progress interviews instead or family/teacher interviews like YRDSB calls them) and guest talks. Our interviews were Wednesday night and Friday morning, to accommodate the large number of translators we require to function. The day between was going to be our delayed 100th Day celebration and early Valentine's observation at school, with the Student Council distributing candygrams.

And then my board declared a snow day for Thursday. 

(Forgive the terrible quality of this photo. I took it through the screen mesh of our patio door.)

Snow days in TDSB are rare. I tried to research how many times we've had snow days and I found this blog post written in 2011 that said that there was a snow day in 1999 and then one in 2008 and that was it up to the point that post was written. Reddit claims there was one in February 2011. The Toronto Star said the last one prior to this was in December 2022, and before that, in February 2019.  According to the newspaper, there have been six snow days in twenty years that have closed Toronto-area schools. (I remember the 2008 one because my devoted husband still took our kids to McDonalds for lunch. For one of those 2010s snow days, I was at the OLA Super Conference. I recorded the cancelled last day from 2022 in my Christmas scrapbook album.) 

Some might have slept in or gone tobogganing, but I was too thankful for the extra time. I glued myself to my computer and worked from early in the morning until late in the evening to put a serious dent into the overdue commentary. Yes, I had the weekend coming up that I could have used, but there is something extra-special about receiving time you didn't think you'd have, like magic.

There were some other gifts that I've received lately that I didn't realize I needed and were completely unexpected. I mentioned the lovely note I received from a Saskatchewanian school library professional at the end of Treasure Mountain Canada 8. I was able to email the writer and now we can connect more regularly, for which I am grateful.

During interviews, I help manage the schedules for the interpreters. They said the nicest things about the way they were treated at our school. As the ESL teacher, I also sat in on a few interviews. A couple of parents said the kindest things about their child's experiences in my class. I didn't realize that they talked with their families about the things we do in the library to that extent. I even received this fragrant bouquet of dried lavender from a student. (His older brother gave a similar arrangement to his classroom teacher. The youngest gave it to me, which touched me deeply. I'm not a classroom teacher this year and I sometimes worry I don't get that same intense bond that a homeroom teacher does with his/her/their students that they see every day for hours at a time.)

Friday was Valentine's Day, and the gift I received from hubby (other than a delicious "linner") was the gift of his company. 

So thank you to everyone for the special gifts:

• gifts of time to get things done
• gifts of kind words to boost my spirits when I doubt myself
• gifts that only you can give - yourself 

Happy Family Day, and stay safe while digging out of the snow!