Hazard Pay

Remember all of the concern over global warming that dominated headlines and news broadcasts earlier this winter? The cherry trees were blossoming in December and so that was a sign of global warming. It was the warmest winter on record and certainly that heralded the oncoming horrors of global warming. So why now, when most of the country is well below freezing and shivering underneath layers of clothing and huddled inside houses where furnaces can not keep up with the cold, have these dire warnings disappeared? Perhaps because it is darn hard to convince someone that the earth is getting warmer when they are absolutely teeth-clanking freezing cold? Perhaps because a little warming sounds rather nice right about now? No matter what schools across the country are closed because it is simply too cold to expect children to stand outside in this weather and wait for a school bus, or even worse trodd through the freezing, biting cold to school. While I realize it is not quite as cold here as it is further north the wind chill is sufficiently below 0*F. Yet the school districts have not considered closing schools or even delaying them by a couple of hours to allow it to warm up to a slightly more humane temperature. Normally as a teacher you feel sympathy for your students out in the cold as you run from your heated car to the heated school building. Not so much in my case. Since my children can not independently navigate from their busses to my classroom I have the joy of getting each and every one of them off of their busses and gathering them like little chicks before we all venture together down to the nice warm classroom. Normally I like this because I get to greet them all as they arrive at school. However, it is COLD!! This means I will be spending a rather significant period of time out in the cold this morning gathering children and sheperding them inside only to dash back outside to get more of them. And have I mentioned that my precious, beautiful disaster HATES being cold? To the point that he screams the entire time we are near the door because he can feel the wind every time the door opens? We should be a fun bunch this morning all shivering and bundled up with a background of screaming and some whining from my new little one who does not understand waiting yet. I think this deserves a little hazard pay. At least some hot chocolate waiting for me in my classroom when we all straggle in, cold and upset and bedragled. And if it is going to be this darn cold, could it at least snow??