A Case of the Holidays

So there's this unwritten universal law in the education system. It exists at every level, and welcomed or not, it permeates public school life now and forever more. Students know it, teachers abide by it, and there is just simply no way around it.

It's the Law of the Pre-Holiday Fever (PHF), sister phenomenon to Spring Fever.  We're all familiar with Spring Fever-- blossoming tulips, twittering birds, perfectly-tempered fresh air, and delightfully brilliant blue skies cause children to lose focus and 'forget' to do their homework. This particular slacker-phenomenon is only slightly concerning. Spring Fever produces an ever-so-gradual decline in student productivity that slowly wanes until the last day of school on June 28th.  So in all honesty, I'd feel bad defaming it, as it follows the natural ebb of the school year.  Pre-Holiday Fever, the monster locked in the basement; however, occurs suddenly, on multiple occasions, at several-month intervals, and coupled with actual holiday vacation, is quite damaging to a student's year-long learning curve.

What happens is this.  Vacation hypothetically starts on a Thursday.
This means students should technically be in attendance Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. 
This means students should technically be in attendance Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
This means students should technically be in attendance Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. 

But, for whatever reason, one-third of your students don't show up any of those days.
The other one-third shows up any two out of three days.
And the other one-third shows up all three days.

That means, on any given day, it is likely that maximum 20 out of 30 students will come to school, and let's be clear, only 10 of those actually show up consistently each of those three days.  How am I supposed to teach anything meaningful?! That's problem number one.

Problem number two is that Monday morning, as these students wake up, get out of bed, yawn and stretch their legs, a light-bulb turns on in their heads and they remember that today is the first day of a very short week before a very long holiday.
They think to themselves, "awww shiiiit, I only gotta sit thru three days of skewl and Wednesday don't even count cuz its the day b4 the holiday, which means Tuesday ain't shit eitha' cuz its the day b4 Wednesday, which means I only gotta get thru 2day, Monday. Hellllzzz yeaa!!"
And then they get this crazed look in their eye because they realize that salvation is just around the corner.
And its with this crazed look that they come to school and terrorize their diligent teacher.

Problem number three is that this happens several times a year, particularly in the NYC public school district.  A nice four-day taste in November for Thanksgiving, ten vacation days one month later for Christmas, then another ten in February for "mid-winter recess" (wtf, I guess I shouldn't complain), and then one more week-long stint for Easter in April.  That's a lot of stoppage time, during which 85% of my students are doing absolutely nothing that even slightly resembles an educational activity. Translation: they come back dumber.

So, as a teacher, I naturally believed it my responsibility to keep my students on track. After all, I was the adult, I was the leader that they allegedly 'looked-up to,' and I was charged with motivating my students to learn.  So during each week of Pre-Holiday Fever, I fought back with all my voracity. I assigned homework as usual and punished students when it didn't get done.  I did not slow down the pace of my lessons and instead worked with students one-on-one during lunch if they were absent the day before.  I did not loosen my reigns, and I certainly did not joke.  I found it my duty to show and instill in my students the idea that school is school is school is school, and vacation is its own completely separate entity.
To me, vacation began at 3:28pm at dismissal on Wednesday, and not 1 minute earlier.  However, despite all my best efforts, their 'I-Don't-Give-Two-Shits' PHF Brainwash Mode was always too powerful for me to conquer, and although lessons and homework etc. were assigned and taught on schedule, my students's brains had been on Snooze since Friday of the previous week.  I was ultimately forced to re-teach the lessons that took place during the Pre-Holiday week once I had regained a full class of 30 upon return from vacation.

Now, this PHF was quite a frustrating phenomenon to me.  I was frustrated that it was a lose/lose situation-- if I taught lessons as planned, they were lost on deaf ears and had to be re-taught later.  But if I buckled and allowed my students some down-time as they desired, they conspicuously won the battle for classroom domination. And I was frustrated that my kids were immature (Uuughhh, why can't you just grow uuup?!), and that they could not swallow their excitement for just a couple of days, suck it up, and be productive like all good little students should.

But today as I walked home from my corporate job at 6:15pm after being the dead-last person in an office of hundreds of people, I realized something horrifying.   Adults are no different! It is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and in an office where the average departure time is is 6:30pm and most people on my team stay until at least 7:00pm, by 5:30, almost everyone had already left.   A quarter of my office has been 'working from home' or has taken off all week, and tomorrow, I concretely know of only four people other than myself who will be in the office.  My guess is we'll all be out by 4:30pm.

Students are forced to go to school on these pre-holiday days by their parents.  They obviously don't want to, but they have no choice-- so they show up, brain already on Stand-by.  Adults don't have to do anything, really. We're adults, we make our own decisions.  So most of us, instead of going through the motions like school children, don't even bother showing up at all, and if we do show up, we feel entitled to leave early.  After all, its the holidays and we have other obligations, right? Everyone (including our bosses and our bosses' bosses and our clients, and our clients' clients) sighs and loosens their belts in preparation for the holidays-- we don't have teachers to hold us accountable.

I'm certainly not arguing against an adult taking a Pre-Holiday breather. I'm just saying, either my students were simply expressing their natural anticipation as apparently all humans do; or we grown-ups haven't really...grown up.  Either way, I realize now that maybe I should have sucked it up and let my kids be kids after all (or at least I should have considered it).

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