How Many Snow Days Do We Have to Make Up?

This seems like the kind of thing I should have already known, but I found the MSTA’s explanation of Missouri’s snow day policy very enlightening and thought I’d share:

A few years ago, the state legislature passed a bill that was intended to put an end to the practice of piecemeal legislation forgiving snow days. Every year, different parts of the state would face inclement weather and the legislature would be asked to passes laws to forgive excessive days off.

.   .   .

School days missed for weather cannot be made up by adding minutes or hours onto remaining school days.

.   .   .

Every school day missed must be made up until you miss the seventh day. At that point, one day must be made up for every two days missed until 14 days are missed. After the 14th day, no more days are required to be made up.

Days Missed

Days to Make Up

1 Day

1

2 Days

2

3 Days

3

4 Days

4

5 Days

5

6 Days

6

7 Days

7

8 Days

7

9 Days

8

10 Days

8

11 Days

9

12 Days

9

13 Days

10

14 Days

10

14 + Days

10

 

Why I End Up Doing All the Work in Group Projects

groupwork

…And maybe one person in the group has a bad attitude. 😉

In all seriousness, though, group projects can be very frustrating for some students. I get that. Yet I still assign cooperative projects all the time in my classes. Why? The truth is that the group work scenario exists beyond high school in college classrooms and work environments, and the dynamics of these groups often doesn’t get much better. It’s important that students learn how to adapt.

The overachiever who typically gets stuck doing all the work is often to blame because they enable others in their group to get away with not doing much and sometimes even insist on doing the greater part of the work because they need to feel in control. That’s right, fellow control freaks, sometimes the bad group dynamic isn’t because the other people are lazy or incompetent: it’s because we have to learn to treat our group like a team. This means you set clear goals, delegate responsibilities, work to motivate each other, and trust everyone to do their part.