“Magical.” That’s how middle schooler Emily Beckman describes snow days—when school closes due to inclement weather and there’s no e-learning in its place. It’s safe to assume that most of her peers feel similarly. After all, what school-age student doesn’t relish a spontaneous day off from school?
But what does a snow day mean to teachers? Do they put down their red pens, grading folders, and laptops?
To find out, Education Week posed this question to educators via social media: When snow cancels school, do you check your work email? We also conducted an (unscientific) LinkedIn poll asking the same question. Of nearly 1,500 respondents to the survey question, 70 percent answered “yes”; 15 percent, no; 14 percent said they check but don’t respond to emails; and 1 percent offered a comment but did not answer the question.
The inquiry also generated a lot of comments on Education Week’s social media channels, representing a spectrum of sentiments. Here’s a sampling of responses:
“I do not check mine after I leave for the day until the next morning. Ever.”
- Lane C.
“Nope. It’s a day off and I only do work during work hours.”
- Jo-Ann M.
“It might not be right, but I use it as a day to catch up because it makes my life easier in the long run, similar to coming in over break to clean/organize, etc. But I don’t look down on those who don’t—I just want to make my life easier so I work on my own time when I feel like it.”
- Eva B.
“I check my work email every day.”
- Alexis W.
Teachers’ workload exceeds contract expectations and other professionals’ weekly average
Educators’ tendency to check their work during a bona fide snow day (as opposed to an “e-learning” or remote work day) hints at a much broader issue, one that likely influences employee dissatisfaction and burnout: teachers’ workload.
Teachers tend to work far more than most employees— and more than the hours specified in their contracts. During the 2020-21 school year, teachers reported spending an average of 52 hours working during a typical school week, according to federal data. Yet the average contract during the same period for full-time public and private school teachers covers stood at 38.5 hours per week during the 2020-21 schol year.
Teachers also put in far more hours at work than employees in other industries. The average full-time private (non-farm) employee in the United States works an average of 32.75 hours weekly, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics—significantly less than teachers’ average of 52 hours per week.
Teachers describe a lack of work-life balance as the ‘last straw’
Many teachers describe the inability to balance the demands of work with their personal lives as the proverbial “last straw” pushing them out of the profession. Student misbehavior, out-of-touch administrators, and low pay also rank high on the list of frustrations according to former Florida elementary teacher Zachary Long who, with his wife Brittany, in 2019 co-founded Life After Teaching, an online community of over 80,000 teachers considering leaving the classroom for other careers.
Long reckoned with the struggle to balance his personal and professional lives before leaving the teaching profession.
“For me, it came down to this: My wife had a health crisis. At the time, I was working 60-plus hours a week,” Long told EdWeek in April 2023. “During summer, I worked a part-time job. I realized that I had to make a choice: Do I want to spend more time with my family, or all my time teaching and working?”
In the face of long work weeks, many teachers report “minimal or nonexistent programming” to support their mental well-being, according to the Merrimack College Teacher Survey, an annual report conducted by the EdWeek Research Center that surveyed 1,487 public school teachers and 131 private school teachers between January and March of 2024.
“Unfortunately, it’s not getting better,” Tim Pressley, a professor of psychology at Christopher Newport University, told Education Week at the time in response to the results of the 2024 Merrimack College Teacher Survey. “Teachers were burned out, had no job satisfaction, low morale during the pandemic, and that has just continued as we’ve come out of this pandemic.”
In light of ongoing challenges to teachers’ morale and struggle to find a decent work-life balance, it’s no wonder that a minority of educators choose not to check their work email during the occasional snow day.
“Absolutely not lol. It’s a day off,” wrote Tabitha L. on Facebook in response to EdWeek’s inquiry.
