A few weeks ago in the copy room, I chatted with a teacher’s aide who said her little Chevy van gets 42 miles per gallon. She also said that she’s been burned by weather forecasts so often (I think that at the time a suspected storm was approaching) that she doesn’t count on anything.

“Believe it when you see it,” we agreed.

Yesterday, after one colleague had emailed the entire school in elation that the winter weather watch had evolved into a warning, I crossed paths with the aide again. She was wearing a red sweater covered with white snowflakes.

“That’s an appropriate sweater,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said emphatically. “And I’m going to wear my pajamas inside out tonight. That way, tomorrow I can just put them right side out and wear them all day.”

I very well might choose to wear my pajamas all day today, too–an option made possible by freezing rain.

It’s the second snow day in a row, with an MLK-inspired three-day weekend starting tonight. Such draconian vacationing is bound to invoke sentimentality in even the most stoic, and so I reflect today on super classroom moments of the past weeks.

But before I continue, I should acknowledge that I mostly share stories in which I am the hero. This is primarily because I view myself as heroic.

My second period this year has been quite enthusiastic about most things (see the Snow Marks post below). They occasionally act as a single herd, seemingly without intentional unity. The other week after their work for the day was finished, they out of nowhere wanted to do the wave. Now, I’ve always wanted to be the type of person that other people cheer for, and so I grabbed my chance. Back and forth across my room, all along the six rows of desks, I ran–and the wave kept up with me. So did the cheering. I was elated, really, and so I acted as if I were going to dive onto the crowd for some surfing. The students cheered at that, too.

The day following I was still elated over my stardom, and so I decided to stop by the cafeteria just to enjoy the calls of “Mr. Jacobs!” “Hey, Mr. Jacobs!” that I was sure would greet me. Of course, reality then struck–the chicken nuggets must have been really tasty that day.

Another way I try to cultivate enthusiasm in the classroom is human-level interaction. That is, if material prizes aren’t momentarily convenient or practical, and if students no longer bite at “a million dollars for the next right answer,” I offer as an immediate reward “a pat on the head by a real, live human being.” This is an especially good idea because of occasional lice outbreaks (right after Christmas break, my team again had to have head checks). Anyway, back in December, a fourth-period student who often seems older than others asked what I was going to give him for his birthday, which was just this week. I replied, “A pat on the head by a real, live human being.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll remember that.” But on Wednesday, as fourth period was muddling in, he didn’t ask. Instead, I heard another student ask him, “Did you get your pat yet?” I promptly gave the birthday boy his due.

Today at around 10:00 it began to snow furiously. One student’s hand flew up. “Mr. Jacobs, it’s snowing.” “I see,” I said, and let the excitement have free reign for a moment or two.

We were in the middle of standardized test review, a rather dry exercise that I’ve attempted to make exciting by offering a check mark for each instance of positive participation (students can lose marks, too, by talking out of turn). The check marks add up, and at the end of the week, each student in each class will receive one, two, or three tickets to enter into a drawing for one of several chances to choose a prize from my prize box. The box contains M’s family’s no-longer desired trinkets, folders and locker furnishings left behind by last year’s students, a few pieces of the candy that occasionally comes my way, a can of sliced pears (a random student–from another team, even–had given it to me after realizing he’d kept it in his locker too long and missed the Christmas food drive), coins from Latin America, and just about whatever else I feel like getting rid of. The funniest thing I gave away last week was chosen by a girl who’s into punk rock/death metal: a cassette tape of Russian folk music.

So anyway, in the test review activity, students rack up check marks rather quickly, and it’s a big deal. However, snow is also a big deal, even though I assured the students that no, we wouldn’t be let out early (although I was hoping…). “Okay,” I said, trying to bring the attention back to the task at hand. “If it’s still snowing at 10:30, everyone will get a free check mark.” That really brought out a whoop of delight and excitement, and we got back to work.

At 10:30, it looked to me as though the trees outside my window were letting a few snowflakes fall here and there, but the students were convinced that it was still snowing, and so they got the check marks. That made them happy.