Imagine a world where students have to do school work even on a snow day. We have five free snow days. Any day that school is canceled after that, we activate the AMI plan. Students log into their chromebooks, complete short assignments, and are marked “in attendance” after assignment completion.
As we have already used 4 out of the 5 free snow days, the next snow day we get would be an AMI learning day, where students do their work from home and submit the work to be counted as “present”.
“The purpose of AMI days is to make sure that learning can continue in the case that we have some sort of emergency inclement weather, or really any other reason that students can’t be in school that day,” HHS principal David Williams said.
Teachers will post their assignment on canvas by 7:30 am during the snow day, and students can complete them from home any time before 7:30 the following day. Students are expected to do 2 to 2.5 hours of work total. This means that each assignment would be about 15 to 20 minutes long, much shorter than a full 8 hour school day.
“I think two and a half hours of work total is all it’s supposed to be for all of your classes. So even though you have all day off, you’re only supposed to have about two and a half hours of actual school work,” Williams said.
Williams gives an explanation on why AMI days are used, how they work, and what the student role in the process is.
“If we have too many snow days, we would have to end up making up those days at the end of the year, in June”, Williams said. “So the AMI days help to ensure that we don’t have to do that. But in order for that to work, we need to have students, quote, ‘in attendance.’ And the way we’re going to measure whether or not students are in attendance is whether or not they actually do the assignment.”
When asked about what would happen if students don’t complete their assignments, Williams said, “Well, they have to do it, so in order for us to count as attendance, big piece of AMI days is it allows us to still finish the school year on time, because we’re mandated by law to be in school for a certain number of days.”
Even though AMI days don’t require zoom meetings, students still have to be engaged in doing the work. As Williams says, “Students are not expected to attend zoom meetings or anything like that, but all students do have to at least interact and attempt some of the assignments that teachers send to them.”
However, not every student agrees with the idea of having AMI days.
“I think it is stupid because we can’t control the weather and how many days we have school called off,” Jaylin Woods (10) said. “And I’m pretty sure the teachers don’t want to have to assign work when they should be off, although I know why we have to because we have to have a certain amount of school days.”
Teachers also have different opinions on AMI days, as ELA teacher, Ms. Olivia Jordan says, “While I will definitely miss the classic snow days, I think that AMI gives a nice opportunity to protect our summer.”
“For my class, AMI days will likely be a short continuation of whatever we are doing in class or some sort of EOC test prep since we have testing season coming up,” she added.
Miranda Guss (12) has a mixed opinion on AMI days. “I understand the school’s decision to do AMI days, but they seem pointless,” she said. “15 minutes per class is enough for a quick review. What are teachers who teach art or gym supposed to do? Do they really think students are going to do their work? I personally think it’s a better option than virtual school seeing as how it went with Covid. It’s good in theory, but I don’t know if it’s something that will work for our school.”
Some students wonder what PE/Gym class would be like during an AMI day, since students obviously can’t be in school.
“For my AMI day, my plans are that they will have some type of assignment for whatever unit we’re in, right now we’re doing lacrosse,” PE teacher, Ms. Jennifer Kloeppel said. ”So if we had a snow day, they would have to do something in regard to the rules of lacrosse or the skills of lacrosse. If it was a different unit and they could go outside and practice, or show or demonstrate a certain skill, we would do that.”
While some students think that AMI days might not be the best, others think that it would be easier and more comfortable for the students to do their work.
“I feel like AMI is good because most students would rather be able to just do their work alone and knock it out quicker, rather than have to do online zoom classes and be in ‘class’ for a longer period of time,” Cole Pursley (10) said.
