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I pride myself on being a tough customer when it comes to snow. I grew up in Michigan through the snowy '70s, studied in frigid New Hampshire, and spent a lot of time in the icier bits of Central and Eastern Europe. When I first moved to Washington, DC almost ten years ago, I rolled my eyes at the hysteria even the lightest snowfall seemed to occasion. I'm made of tougher stuff, I told myself.

But, oh, this week is so very different. Where I live, we got almost thirty inches of snow over the weekend, and we're told to expect ten to twenty more on Tuesday and Wednesday. No one can get anywhere. DC schools might be closed for the better part of the week.

And that, apparently, is reason enough to spark fierce battles between angry folk everywhere. Check the blogosphere, and you'll find some people calling DC teachers lazy because many called for a snow day. (A couple even make the preposterous claim that thirty inches wouldn't have closed schools in their day.) You'll find many more people accusing DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee of the most callous disregard for children, because the District toyed with the idea of keeping schools open on Monday.

It's time to calm down. Let's give teachers the benefit of the doubt. They care about children and don't want them climbing through three-foot snow drifts to get to school. Let's also give the the Chancellor the benefit of the doubt. She cares about children and doesn't want them losing a day of learning--or worse--a day of food. (For many DC children, a day without school is a day without breakfast or lunch.)

As is so often the case in education, it's way too simple to create stories about bad guys and good guys. And it's way too common.