Thursday, May 19, 2005

We've Been So Lucky This Spring

This year had the potential to be every teacher's nightmare--an early Easter/Spring Break, followed by 9 straight weeks of classes, followed by a 3-day weekend, and, for our district, 9 days of school after Memorial Day. Here in Northern California, the warm spring days give way to puppy love, outside activities, a reluctance to sit in a classroom and work on logarithms, and allergies.

For students, Spring Break often marks the end of taking school seriously. After Spring Break it's all downhill as the siren song of the muses of Helios, the mighty Sun God, calls to the students.

But not this year.

Today is May 19th--and it was raining today! It's rained a lot since Spring Break. I'm sure my readers in the rest of the United States are saying, "Yeah? So? Of course it rains in April!" but here it doesn't. We should all be in shorts and sunscreen now, the American River should be teeming with rafts, and the waterslides at Waterworld and Golfland Sunsplash should be filled with screaming kids and teenagers.

But not this year.

Instead we're having a spring like those I remember in New York. Heck, it's even muggy some days!

The amount of direct sunshine is directly proportional to student apathy. As a result of the weather we've had since Spring Break, most students are still hanging in there--and for this I'm thankful. We teachers got lucky this Spring.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd much rather have cool weather than hot weather. I can't stand hot weather at all, which is probably why I enjoyed Huntington Beach so much while I was down there.

Fred said...

Not only is it already summer-like here in Florida (mid 80s and very humid) but the hurricane season starts in a few weeks. Based on last year's season, we're already prepared.