Will there be a Spring Break at Your place?

[sinenomine]

I just got advance word that there will not be a Spring break at my institution; we'll start as scheduled and end a week earlier than originally planned.

[EdnaMode]

A colleague at another school told me that their institution was cancelling spring break but was adding random days off into the schedule (to be determined at a later date) to give faculty and students a mental health break. That's all well and good, but I know I'd be annoyed if I had my semester all planned and a mental health day was scheduled for the same day I had planned to give a midterm exam. Rescheduling an exam would take another day from teaching. I hope my place doesn't do this, or if they do, at least give some advance warning so we can plan around it.

[little bongo]

No spring break--five separate designated classless days spread throughout the semester, with same start and finish time.

This seems worse than a spring break.  When those days off are on a Monday  or a Friday, (and maybe a Thursday or Tuesday), the students have the opportunity to travel on multiple minibreaks instead of one longer one!

Good Luck!!

Thanks! We could all use some good luck.

[polly_mer]

A colleague at another school told me that their institution was cancelling spring break but was adding random days off into the schedule (to be determined at a later date) to give faculty and students a mental health break. That's all well and good, but I know I'd be annoyed if I had my semester all planned and a mental health day was scheduled for the same day I had planned to give a midterm exam. Rescheduling an exam would take another day from teaching. I hope my place doesn't do this, or if they do, at least give some advance warning so we can plan around it.

The surprise day off being a bad thing for those of us who plan was exactly my thought while reading: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/12/davidson-college-gives-students-surprise-day-after-fall-break-canceled

[phi-rabbit]

A colleague at another school told me that their institution was cancelling spring break but was adding random days off into the schedule (to be determined at a later date) to give faculty and students a mental health break. That's all well and good, but I know I'd be annoyed if I had my semester all planned and a mental health day was scheduled for the same day I had planned to give a midterm exam. Rescheduling an exam would take another day from teaching. I hope my place doesn't do this, or if they do, at least give some advance warning so we can plan around it.

This is what's being done at my school (maybe I'm at your colleague's school?) but I don't think that particular problem is going to be a concern for me because I believe they are going to announce them before the semester starts rather than spring them by surprise.  It won't make much difference to me because the number of days in the semester is going to remain the same as a normal spring semester.  I'm not committed to (say) "this exam on April 3" rather than "this exam on Day X of class."  I just need to know what the break days are prior to plugging the actual dates into the syllabus which I only do just before the start of the semester anyway.

A bigger issue is whether this will have the effect they are hoping for or not, especially if the break days just result in students taking multiple long weekends.  The rumor/guess going around is that they will be a mix of midweek days to try to avoid long weekends and balance between the different class schedules.  Unfortunately, I can predict what will happen.  If there is a Tuesday off, students will all skip Monday classes for the long weekend.  Likewise for Thursday and Friday (and many students already arrange their schedules to avoid Friday classes).  Also, I lurk on student social media sometimes and have observed that the vibe seems to be that many students plan to take the originally scheduled break week as a week off regardless, either because they're angry about it or because their parents had already planned a vacation (!).

My view is that they should not have a spring break at all and just start the semester late.  I don't find doing a solid semester without a break fun, but we already had to do it this semester (we did the start early/end before Thanksgiving thing) and I imagine we'll survive.  The plan they came up with was supposedly the result of input from several groups including students, and it sure does show, in a "too many cooks" kind of way.

[Aster]

I would find it highly unprofessional for a Higher Ed institution to leave its Spring 2021 Academic Calendar in a vague and unfinished state after the institution's Spring registration has already opened up to students.

What are they waiting for to? A vaccine? Sorry, that ain't coming anytime soon.

[phi-rabbit]

I would find it highly unprofessional for a Higher Ed institution to leave its Spring 2021 Academic Calendar in a vague and unfinished state after the institution's Spring registration has already opened up to students.

That's fair, although complicating things is that they have been pushing for registration to start earlier and earlier so that they can have students go to their advisors and fill out a plan for the entire year in advance. We now have to turn in our department's offerings so far ahead that by the time a term happens I've long ago forgotten what I agreed to teach and when!

[dr_codex]

I would find it highly unprofessional for a Higher Ed institution to leave its Spring 2021 Academic Calendar in a vague and unfinished state after the institution's Spring registration has already opened up to students.

What are they waiting for to? A vaccine? Sorry, that ain't coming anytime soon.

Many of the State systems operate on behalf of elected politicians. If you'd take it up with them, I'll cheer you on.

[Aster]

It sounds like a private university to me. Phi, are you at a public or a private?

[phi-rabbit]

It sounds like a private university to me. Phi, are you at a public or a private?

Public.

[Aster]

It sounds like a private university to me. Phi, are you at a public or a private?

Public.

Ugh. That's bad. Typically, public's operate with so much established bureaucracy that things like academic calendars are laid down in stone, semesters ahead in advance, and screwed down tight against casual alteration by multiple committees, forms, sign-off's, etc...  I feel kind of weird rooting for the bureaucracy, but in this case I'm alarmed that all of that could be so easily bypassed and your academic calendar left incomplete.

I mean, it's one thing to make emergency changes to a calendar within a term for things like blizzards, floods, coronavirus spikes, etc... But it's a very different thing to not even finalize an academic calendar so everyone can properly plan for it. That just seems incredibly careless and sloppy.

[phi-rabbit]

Oh, it was certainly complete semesters ago. This is an emergency change. It would have been irresponsible not to change it given what's gone on in my area with other schools – I just think they made a wrong and rather silly change.

[Aster]

I thought that you said they that left the Spring schedule still undecided. Perhaps I am not reading correctly.

[phi-rabbit]

I think we might generally be talking at cross purposes, but let me clarify my situation.  I had thought our calendar was yet undecided, but it turns out I am mistaken.  The calendar is now available, so I'm behind on the news (but it was recent in any case).  Spring semester starts and ends on the same days originally scheduled, but spring break days are scattered around the calendar.  Contrary to rumor that it would all be midweek days, it spreads the days off and includes Monday and Friday. 

Whether the spring calendar should have been decided before mid- fall semester is certainly a good question and the answer is likely "yes."  Whether it should have been decided and then immutably set in stone before spring registration opened is another question and I have to say the answer is "no" because registration opens so early at Rabbit U.  Registration for spring 2021 opened in March 2020, and the development of the pandemic and some disastrous school openings in my region mean that it is entirely appropriate to rethink a calendar that had been created in early 2020. 

I'd rather have them change course and kill spring break (even if they should have done so earlier) than stick to a pre-pandemic calendar on principle.  Better late than never.  I'm just not sure that scattering spring break days around the calendar is going to be a good idea, as previously noted.  In fact I am pretty sure it is a bad idea.

[spork]

Found out that we are very unlikely to have spring break. Probably the spring semester will start a week later than usual. But no official announcement yet.