While snow blankets school parking lots across mid-Missouri, students are logging into virtual classrooms instead of sleeping in on what used to be traditional snow days. The shift to Alternative Methods of Instruction (AMI) has transformed how schools handle inclement weather, keeping students on track academically but drawing mixed reactions from teenagers who miss their surprise winter breaks.

As someone who sometimes struggles with the way things are worded, I typically struggle with AMI days. I don’t really learn anything either when teachers get lazy with the assignments and make us do easy things. However, there are also teachers who make us do really hard and complicated things when we have never stepped foot in their classroom.
I have found that lots of students do not do their AMI assignments. But why is that? A handful of students said that they typically don’t understand, and teachers tend to not reach out and respond. However, some students just admit they don’t want to do anything on AMI days. But can you blame them?
Many students agree that AMI days are not fun and typically have no point. Why do we have to have a certain amount of them before they can become a snow day? But then we dread having just normal snow days because they mean we have to go back to five-day weeks for however many days we had as additional snow days.
As young kids we used to love snow days because that meant no school, no work, just a day of fun and being out in the snow. However, we don’t really get that anymore. We dread AMI days and that’s why students don’t do their work. We just want normal snow days back.