If you have Mrs. McCourt-Makaron teaching your class today, she’ll tell you that your homework is to flush some ice cubes down the toilet, leave cotton balls and a white crayon on the windowsill, and wear your pajamas inside out. What might sound peculiar to some is no joke— these are all a part of the snow day superstitions she’s collected over her years of teaching.
When the forecast is predicting upcoming snow, students and teachers alike keep their hopes high for a day off. With those high hopes comes the practice of traditions, traditions that McCourt-Makaron has been accumulating since her days of student teaching in college, all of them being from students.
“They are all from students. Having a superstition for a snow day didn’t exist when I was a kid, so when we were getting up, we would wish for them and pray to have them, but we would still wake up in the morning and wait to hear your number being called on the radio. You would pray, cross your fingers, cross your ankles, do all those things to hear your number,” McCourt-Makaron said.
“My first year of student teaching was the first time I’d heard about it. It was the pajama one, you turned them inside out. I collected them when I was a teacher, and then, when my kids were at school, and now there’s even more,” McCourt-Makaron said.
Among the traditions McCourt-Makaron shares with students are putting cotton balls and a white crayon on the windowsill, “because you want to trick the sky into thinking that it’s already snowing.” She also suggests “putting a spoon under your pillow, because that’s supposed to represent dreaming of shoveling snow and manifesting the snow coming.”
McCourt-Makaron also says to eat ice cream with a fork to practice patience when waiting for the snow.
“I felt like it was my older daughter, who’s absolutely brilliant, trying to trick me into getting ice cream, but it was actually a thing. Eating ice cream with a fork, because the reasoning was the snow sometimes comes as snow slowly, and you had to learn patience, and that was what they explained to me was the reasoning behind it,” McCourt-Makaron explained.
She also tells her students to “flush ice cubes down the toilet as a sacrifice to the Snow Lords” her favorite superstition of all.
“I think that’s so fun that the Snow Lords live in our toilet system. I feel like, of all of the beautiful places the Snow Lords could live, like in the Alps, or the Himalayas, all of these beautiful, snowy places, they live in our sewer system,” McCourt-Makaron said.
“Since the beginning of human history, we’ve all done actions to make things happen that we want to happen. This exists throughout written and unwritten history. Our ancestors would dance to make the rain come, or to make a good harvest come they would have celebrations. So, these ideas and these superstitions have existed forever,” McCourt-Makaron explained.
Snow days for McCourt-Makaron are representative of the many different students coming to the district from all kinds of different places, and she hopes to preserve the traditions for as long as she can.
“We’re absorbing all of these traditions and the snow day thing is just another. It’s a magical feeling, regardless of your political leanings or religion, or ‘our school is better than your school.’ It’s something that every single kid can join in. Almost every kid on the East Coast of America is going to get excited. It’s not about what ideology or what belief system you have. It’s something positive that every kid can enjoy,” McCourt-Makaron said.
McCourt-Makaron’s own personal snow day superstition is wearing her “snowball bracelet,” a white and silver charm bracelet, worn in hopes of snow. As for how she’ll be spending a snow day, McCourt-Makaron says she’ll be taking a “self-care day”. I’m not shoveling, I’ll pay somebody. I always bake something really decadent and yummy, because it feels good to turn the oven on. It warms up the house and everything smells good. I’ll make tons of hot cocoa and warm tea, and I have daughters, and Gilmore Girls is massive in our house, so we’ll do a Gilmore Girls Marathon.”
In the upcoming weeks of winter- and spring, for that matter- McCourt-Makaron already has her snow day predictions down.
“We are definitely going to have snow tomorrow. My prediction is that we will have snow tomorrow. We are also having a snow day on February 29th and March 3rd, and we will have a late snowstorm around April 5th this year. Those are my snow day predictions. Let’s trust the groundhog. This is a year of magic, I’m calling it,” McCourt-Makaron said.
If you’re hoping for the day off tomorrow, be sure to do Mrs. McCourt-Makaron’s homework, and wish for some snow with her snow day superstitions.