Snow Days Give Teaching Couples, Their Families a Chance to Tackle Projects

For many families, the numerous snow days this year have caused a fair amount of disruption at home.

When mom and dad are both teachers, however, the dynamic is little different.

While there are many disadvantages in teaching continuity, a snow day doesn’t require scrambling for child care and immediately digging the car out of the driveway.

“The kids get to stay home and we don’t have to drive into work,” said Travis Stevens, a Canton resident who teaches in Newington.  

In fact there’s been so much down time this year, teachers like Stevens and his wife Jen and their neighbors Tim and Heidi O’Donnell have had enough time to tackle a few projects at home.   

So on a recent week, with two predicted snow days in a row, Travis and Jen Stevens targeted that vintage wallpaper in their living room.

“This was inspired because we are so stir crazy,” said Jen Stevens, a fifth-grade teacher at Canton Intermediate School.

And, of course, there was also the advantage of offering a little bit of a distraction for 6-year-old Jillian and 9-year-old Emma, who helped rip some of the paper off the walls.

“It’s a whole family project,” Jen Stevens said.

Travis Stevens, a sixth-grade language arts and social studies teacher at John Wallace Middle School in Newington, said it seemed like a good week to start. Not only was there two snow days in a row but he also needed to take a third day because of a professional coming to the house to help repair a window leak caused by the winter weather.

Of course, like most home projects, this one turned out to have its challenges. Travis Stevens said the top layer of paper came off fairly easily. Under that, however, were layers of paper, glue and some paint for good measure.

Commercial products and recommended home remedies failed to work the promised magic and by the end of the second day, the family started wondering why the project seemed so appealing. Travis Stevens also begin thinking about ways to get enough paper off and use other techniques to help smooth out the walls without destroying them.

And soon it was back to work and the project was put on hold.

Across the street, literally, another pair of teachers also took advantage of some snow days.

Tim and Heidi O’Donnell were already planning to redo their kitchen. In actuality, Tim’s father Dick, a contractor from Simsbury, is doing much of the work, mostly by his choice, but a recent snow day gave Tim O’Donnell the chance to help kick the project into high gear.

“The snow days were properly lined up and allowed for the destruction of an entire kitchen in one day,” said Heidi O’Donnell, an eighth-grade science teacher in Plymouth.  

“Mother Nature was right on schedule,” added Tim O’Donnell, a junior and senior social studies teacher at Canton High School. “We were dreading doing it in the winter. It’s actually worked out well.”

Heidi said the couple’s sons, Aidan, 10 and Liam, 7, were “supportive.”

And the snow days also gave the family a chance to break out the snowshoes and cross-country skis.

But while the teachers may take advantage of the benefits of snow days, they agree having so many this year has not been good for education continuity.

“The kids at school are so out of whack,” Jen Stevens said on one recent snow day.

“It’s horrible as far as any kind of consistency,” Heidi O’Donnell said.

Tim O’Donnell added that the shortened days – Canton has had five late openings and an early release – are also not ideal. They shorten classes to about 35 minutes.

“There’s no educational value,” he said.

So while the snow days allowed projects to go forward, Heidi O’Donnell said the number this year – seven in her district – has been too much.

“We love the occasional snow day,” she said.