Counting the days
Workers in the field of education must be adept at disambiguation. One of my favourite words; some days it applies to the majority of what goes on around me. The skilled teacher, leading the student to an understanding of a concept. Who am I trying to kid? Too often, just parting the mist is sufficient. This evening, I watched the wonder of calendar creation.
Here’s the thing; to some students, a calendar is a schedule of operations. To others, it’s a catalogue of the material that might be covered in a given subset of courses. In the union set, both. This evening, I watched the wonder of choosing dates for the upcoming school year.
If you work in your own business, you may think of the year as a 365 day long attempt to earn. To those of us in education (here in Quebec), a year is a carefully planned range of 200 days. Other jurisdictions have their own definition. Back to the 200 day concept. For purposes of the Education Act, the school year is defined as 180 pedagogical days. For a school board, the contract term is 200 days. The 20 days of play are actually used for professional development and administration.
When the “calendar committee” sits, the goal is to place those 200 days on top of a grid of 365. Since Saturday and Sunday are sacrosanct, 104 days have already been allocated. We’re now down to 261. Everybody knows that summer lasts for two months, so subtract another 62, but add back in 16, because there is no way to make the weekend last twice as long. I know; I’ve wished enough over the years. So far, we’ve “spent” 145 days, leaving 220. Still with me.
The goal, then is to place the 200 days over a possible 220, but guaranteeing that certain “holidays” will be respected. As well, the “vacations” at Christmas and March Break (which may take place in February) shouldn’t begin or end on certain days of the week. At this point, I’ve lost count, and whatever the committee offers up will be acceptable.
