The List Is Broken, Says the Teacher Who Kept Drawing It

April 14, 2026

Margot Thaw teaches fourth-grade science at Mesa Valley Elementary in Grand Junction, Colorado. She does not exist, but her filing cabinet does.

Seventeen years of phenological wheels live in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in a classroom that smells like dry-erase markers and hand sanitizer. The wheels are a standard elementary science exercise: students divide a circle into four quadrants — winter, spring, summer, fall — and draw what they see outside. Margot Thaw has assigned this exercise every September since 2009. She stopped in 2024. She hasn't thrown the old ones away.

Grand Junction sits at the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers in a valley that, until recently, experienced four legible seasons. This past winter, Colorado recorded its worst snowpack in history: 3.1 inches of snow water equivalent versus 9.1 inches in the prior record-low year of 2012.¹ In the South Platte Basin, snowpack measured 4% of normal.² Melt-off in key basins occurred four to six weeks earlier than the previously recorded earliest dates.²

Margot's fourth-grade curriculum includes a winter weather unit. Page 34 of the district-approved textbook asks students to measure snowfall. The UCAR Center for Science Education's standard activity reads: "Are you in a place where snow falls in winter? If so, try catching snowflakes."³

We spoke in early April, during what the textbook calls spring.

You've been teaching fourth-grade science for seventeen years. When did the textbook start feeling wrong?

Margot: Wrong is a strong word. I'd say it started feeling optimistic.

Maybe 2018. We do this snow measurement activity in January. Rulers, collection trays, the whole production. A kid raised his hand and said, "What if it doesn't snow?" Very matter-of-fact. Like he was asking about a fire drill. And I said, "It'll snow." And it didn't. Not that week. Not the next. We finally did the activity in February with about half an inch that melted by lunch. I wrote "modified due to weather" in my lesson notes.

What does "modified due to weather" actually mean?

Margot: It means I skipped it and hoped nobody would ask. You learn a lot of euphemisms in education. "Modified due to weather" is the one I invented for myself.

The phenological wheels in your filing cabinet. What do they show?

Margot: So the wheel is a circle, four quadrants, twelve months. The kids draw what they see. Trees, birds, weather, whatever. First few years, the wheels were basically identical. Snow in winter, green in spring, brown in fall. Little suns in summer. They looked like the poster on my wall. You could've laminated any of them and sold them at a teacher supply store.

Around 2016, 2017, the winter quadrants started getting sparse. Less white. More brown. One kid drew a cactus in January, which got a big laugh, but honestly? Not that far off.

By 2022, I had students drawing fire in the summer quadrant. Not sun. Fire. Orange and red, but not the fun kind. The kind with smoke. Nine-year-olds drawing smoke.

I kept them all. I don't know why. I think I thought someone would want to see them someday. Like evidence.

Evidence of what?

Margot: [long pause] That I noticed? That someone in this building was paying attention while the worksheets kept saying the same thing year after year?

I realize that sounds grandiose. I'm a fourth-grade teacher with a filing cabinet. But those wheels are seventeen years of data drawn in crayon, and they tell a story the textbook won't.

The field guides your students use on bird walks. Are those still accurate?

Margot: Oh, the field guides. Okay, so we do a spring bird walk every April. Kids get a checklist from the regional guide, binoculars if we have enough, and they check off what they see. When I started, a good group would spot maybe fifteen species in an hour. Jays, sparrows, a hawk if we were lucky. The pinyon jay was our star. Loud, blue, travels in these big rowdy groups like a bachelorette party. The kids went nuts for them.

Pinyon jays have declined about eighty percent.⁴ We haven't seen one on a bird walk since 2021.

The checklist still lists them. I could cross them off, but then a kid asks why, and then I'm teaching climate science to nine-year-olds in a state where the elementary standards haven't been updated since... well. Let me just say the checklist still lists them.

A recent study found that 75% of North American bird species are declining across their ranges, with the sharpest losses in regions where temperatures have risen most.⁵ Do your students notice the absences?

Margot: Kids are weird about absence. They don't notice what's missing. They notice what's wrong. A kid won't say "there are fewer birds." A kid will say "the list is broken."

“

And then you're standing in a field with a nine-year-old who has just, without any scientific training, without any framework, identified the core problem. The list is broken. The book describes a place that doesn't match the place we're standing in.

I had a girl last year, very serious kid, came back from the bird walk and said, "Ms. Thaw, I think this book is about somewhere else." And I said, "No, honey, it's about here." And she looked at me like I was the one who didn't understand.

She wasn't wrong.

You teach the four-seasons unit. Colorado increasingly has something closer to two extended seasons with volatile transitions.⁶ How do you teach four seasons when there aren't four?

Margot: You just teach it. You open the book. The book says four. You say four. The window says something else. You don't look at the window.

That sounds worse than it is. Or maybe it sounds exactly as bad as it is. I've lost the ability to tell.

The poster's still on my wall. Four quadrants. Winter is blue and white. I bought that poster my first year. Eleven dollars at a teacher supply store in Fruita. It is the most dishonest thing in my classroom and I can't take it down because then there's a blank space and a kid asks what was there and I have to... what? There's no worksheet for that conversation. Nobody has written the lesson plan called "The Seasons Your Teacher Learned Don't Exist Anymore." I checked. I'd buy it. I'd pay more than eleven dollars.

Have you ever used the word "grief" for what you're describing?

Margot: Grief is for something that dies. What do you call it when something just stops matching? When the word and the thing quietly separate and nobody sends a memo?

It's more like teaching from a book that's being erased while you're reading it out loud. Every year a little less matches. But the textbook doesn't update.⁷ The standards don't update. The NOAA climate normals we're supposed to reference update every decade, and the next update might not happen at all because NOAA is being... [gestures vaguely]... you know.⁸

“

So you're teaching to a baseline that's already wrong, using tools that are becoming fictional, in a building with a poster that shows a world that doesn't exist, to children who can see out the window. And you do it again tomorrow.

That's the job. That's the whole job now.

What would you want, if you could have anything?

Margot: A snowflake. One snowflake in January. Not for the worksheet. Just so I could stop lying about page 34.

[She looks at the filing cabinet.]

I'd also take a new poster. But I'd want to pick the colors myself this time. And I'd leave one quadrant blank. Let the kids fill it in with whatever they actually see. Even if it's smoke. Even if it's nothing.

Especially if it's nothing.

Colorado snowpack data, 2025–26 season. Climate Central and NRCS SNOTEL monitoring records, April 2026. ↩
South Platte Basin snowpack and melt-off timing data. NRCS SNOTEL, March 2026. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/wcc/home/ ↩ ↩²
UCAR Center for Science Education, "Seasons and Weather" classroom activities. https://scied.ucar.edu/activity ↩
Pinyon jay population decline estimates. Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database; see also Nevada Department of Wildlife habitat reports. ↩
Jarzyna, M. & Keil, P. (2026). "Acceleration Hotspots of North American Birds' Decline Are Associated with Agriculture." Science, 391(6788):917–921. DOI: 10.1126/science.ads0871 ↩
Season creep and phenological shift data. Climate Signals / Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/season-creep ↩
A study of 57 college biology textbooks (1970–2019) found climate change coverage decreased in the 2010s, and solutions content fell from 15% to 3%. See Landin, J. et al., reported via Columbia Climate School. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/02/09/climate-education-in-the-u-s-where-it-stands-and-why-it-matters/ ↩
NOAA Climate Normals are updated decennially; the 1991–2020 normals are current. The 2031 update is at risk due to ongoing NOAA budget reductions and restructuring. ↩

Margot Thaw teaches fourth-grade science at Mesa Valley Elementary in Grand Junction, Colorado. She does not exist, but her filing cabinet does.

We spoke in early April, during what the textbook calls spring.

You've been teaching fourth-grade science for seventeen years. When did the textbook start feeling wrong?

Margot: Wrong is a strong word. I'd say it started feeling optimistic.

What does "modified due to weather" actually mean?

Margot: It means I skipped it and hoped nobody would ask. You learn a lot of euphemisms in education. "Modified due to weather" is the one I invented for myself.

The phenological wheels in your filing cabinet. What do they show?

Around 2016, 2017, the winter quadrants started getting sparse. Less white. More brown. One kid drew a cactus in January, which got a big laugh, but honestly? Not that far off.

By 2022, I had students drawing fire in the summer quadrant. Not sun. Fire. Orange and red, but not the fun kind. The kind with smoke. Nine-year-olds drawing smoke.

I kept them all. I don't know why. I think I thought someone would want to see them someday. Like evidence.

Evidence of what?

Margot: [long pause] That I noticed? That someone in this building was paying attention while the worksheets kept saying the same thing year after year?

I realize that sounds grandiose. I'm a fourth-grade teacher with a filing cabinet. But those wheels are seventeen years of data drawn in crayon, and they tell a story the textbook won't.

The field guides your students use on bird walks. Are those still accurate?

Pinyon jays have declined about eighty percent.⁴ We haven't seen one on a bird walk since 2021.

A recent study found that 75% of North American bird species are declining across their ranges, with the sharpest losses in regions where temperatures have risen most.⁵ Do your students notice the absences?

Margot: Kids are weird about absence. They don't notice what's missing. They notice what's wrong. A kid won't say "there are fewer birds." A kid will say "the list is broken."

“

She wasn't wrong.

You teach the four-seasons unit. Colorado increasingly has something closer to two extended seasons with volatile transitions.⁶ How do you teach four seasons when there aren't four?

Margot: You just teach it. You open the book. The book says four. You say four. The window says something else. You don't look at the window.

That sounds worse than it is. Or maybe it sounds exactly as bad as it is. I've lost the ability to tell.

Have you ever used the word "grief" for what you're describing?

Margot: Grief is for something that dies. What do you call it when something just stops matching? When the word and the thing quietly separate and nobody sends a memo?

“

That's the job. That's the whole job now.

What would you want, if you could have anything?

Margot: A snowflake. One snowflake in January. Not for the worksheet. Just so I could stop lying about page 34.

[She looks at the filing cabinet.]

Especially if it's nothing.

Colorado snowpack data, 2025–26 season. Climate Central and NRCS SNOTEL monitoring records, April 2026. ↩
South Platte Basin snowpack and melt-off timing data. NRCS SNOTEL, March 2026. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/wcc/home/ ↩ ↩²
UCAR Center for Science Education, "Seasons and Weather" classroom activities. https://scied.ucar.edu/activity ↩
Pinyon jay population decline estimates. Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database; see also Nevada Department of Wildlife habitat reports. ↩
Jarzyna, M. & Keil, P. (2026). "Acceleration Hotspots of North American Birds' Decline Are Associated with Agriculture." Science, 391(6788):917–921. DOI: 10.1126/science.ads0871 ↩
Season creep and phenological shift data. Climate Signals / Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/season-creep ↩
A study of 57 college biology textbooks (1970–2019) found climate change coverage decreased in the 2010s, and solutions content fell from 15% to 3%. See Landin, J. et al., reported via Columbia Climate School. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/02/09/climate-education-in-the-u-s-where-it-stands-and-why-it-matters/ ↩
NOAA Climate Normals are updated decennially; the 1991–2020 normals are current. The 2031 update is at risk due to ongoing NOAA budget reductions and restructuring. ↩

The List Is Broken, Says the Teacher Who Kept Drawing It

You've been teaching fourth-grade science for seventeen years. When did the textbook start feeling wrong?

What does "modified due to weather" actually mean?

The phenological wheels in your filing cabinet. What do they show?

Evidence of what?

The field guides your students use on bird walks. Are those still accurate?

A recent study found that 75% of North American bird species are declining across their ranges, with the sharpest losses in regions where temperatures have risen most.5 Do your students notice the absences?

You teach the four-seasons unit. Colorado increasingly has something closer to two extended seasons with volatile transitions.6 How do you teach four seasons when there aren't four?

Have you ever used the word "grief" for what you're describing?

What would you want, if you could have anything?

Footnotes

You've been teaching fourth-grade science for seventeen years. When did the textbook start feeling wrong?

What does "modified due to weather" actually mean?

The phenological wheels in your filing cabinet. What do they show?

Evidence of what?

The field guides your students use on bird walks. Are those still accurate?

A recent study found that 75% of North American bird species are declining across their ranges, with the sharpest losses in regions where temperatures have risen most.5 Do your students notice the absences?

You teach the four-seasons unit. Colorado increasingly has something closer to two extended seasons with volatile transitions.6 How do you teach four seasons when there aren't four?

Have you ever used the word "grief" for what you're describing?

What would you want, if you could have anything?

Footnotes

A recent study found that 75% of North American bird species are declining across their ranges, with the sharpest losses in regions where temperatures have risen most.⁵ Do your students notice the absences?

You teach the four-seasons unit. Colorado increasingly has something closer to two extended seasons with volatile transitions.⁶ How do you teach four seasons when there aren't four?

A recent study found that 75% of North American bird species are declining across their ranges, with the sharpest losses in regions where temperatures have risen most.⁵ Do your students notice the absences?

You teach the four-seasons unit. Colorado increasingly has something closer to two extended seasons with volatile transitions.⁶ How do you teach four seasons when there aren't four?