Tuesday, May 30, 2006
The Fan Club
This morning I arrived at school and was greeted with a distinct burning sensation as I entered my classroom. Fortunately for me, this was not the result of the spicy Ethiopian food I had chowed upon over the weekend, but rather the sudden blast of superheated air that smacked me in the face upon opening the door. No, this was not an itchy, burning sensation...this was the muggy delight of a kiln that is Underwood High School the last month of the school year. I'm not sure who the engineering genius was behind the building's design, but Underwood has a great deal of thermodynamic inertia. In other words, the building doesn't heat up quickly...but once the internal temperature rises, the classrooms retain their heat extremely well.
Yes, despite my assertion in last week's astronomy lesson that summer begins on June 21st in the Northern Hemisphere, my freshmen and juniors alike were stewing in their own juices, not to mention their belief that the school year is basically over. In fairness, they may be right. The two seniors in my chemistry classes are scheduled to take exams this week; freshmen have theirs starting next Monday. Once exams end, things get very, very interesting. The Powers That Be have provided an additional week following exams input grades and so forth, but the kids know better. Once final exams are completed, do they really have to come to school? And if they do...do they really have to learn? Do they really have to listen or pay attention? Why should this be any different than the rest of the year?
But there is a difference, and a serious one, in the form of school climate. And I'm not talking about the discipline issues, although there is a connection. I'm talking about the weather. Because let's be totally honest. When it's 90 degrees outside and the humidity is leaning just shy of thunderstorm territory, there is not a student in the world who wouldn't rather be doing something else. (And given how noisy and disruptive the kids got, hardly a teacher either!) Still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Underwood is a school, and so the education process had to go on with as much normalcy as possible.
Never mind that the water fountains don't work and the few kids who do bring in water have a tendency to throw it on each other in the hallways. Just ignore the special education students roaming the hallways because their teachers are missing in action. And please, please, please disregard the announcements wasting class time explaining about how hot it is as if we were not perceptive enough to notice that we could fry eggs on floorboards. Just keep on teaching! Keep those standards high and those failure rates low! Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!
Some teachers make concessions to the weather, but other than propping open the classroom windows, I tend to make no other efforts. My students complain and cuss me out. They vent and sweat and curse and ask why I do not get an electric fan like their other teachers. I tell them that I have no fan and attempt to move on, but there is a deeper reason for the situation. I am a proud non-member of the "fan club." In the past, I have brought fans into my room, both my own and those provided by the school, and I have found that on every occasion they have caused more frustration than good. Consider, a fan, even a rotating one, can only blow air a certain distance and cover a certain area of the classroom. On a good day, I'd bet the fan could directly influence the comfort levels of 1/4 of a classroom if all the kids were sitting in their seats. But the kids will crowd around the fan. They will trade seats. They will push and fight to get to the fan. On past occasions, they even knocked down a fan! (Ol' Boxy's blades will never be whole again...)
So rather than deal with that crap throughout the day, I embrace the heat...student comfort be damned. I have no fans in every sense of the word. And as one might expect, my students have come up with creative coping mechanisms...like crowding near the classroom door which they insist stays open even though people keep popping in, saying hello, and acting like clowns. Or rushing to get to class first so they can slump by the windows and do nothing. Or my personal favorite, putting their heads down and just doing nothing. Granted, the last of these is not ideal, but if I can get a few of my more disruptive students to adopt this tactic so much the better. Unfortunately, this remians the second most popular coping technique, right behind cussing out the teacher. At top rage, they reach levels of creativity in their profanity that would make a marine drill sergeant blush. The combination of high volume and high heat leads to a work environment reminiscent of a foundry...only without the metal. Here we forge education...also in every sense of the word.
The cussing however doesn't bother me that much on a personal level. As stated in previous posts, I'm not in this job to be popular. No, my fear is that the students will be so caught up in the heat of the moment complaining about such things (pun retroactively intended) that they will completely ignore the last little nuggets of knowledge I am trying to cram into the final weeks, such that when the final exams come they will fail...again...and I will have nothing with which to entice them during the final days before summer.
Except my warmth and personal charm, of course, but we all know how well that's worked in the past...
This morning I arrived at school and was greeted with a distinct burning sensation as I entered my classroom. Fortunately for me, this was not the result of the spicy Ethiopian food I had chowed upon over the weekend, but rather the sudden blast of superheated air that smacked me in the face upon opening the door. No, this was not an itchy, burning sensation...this was the muggy delight of a kiln that is Underwood High School the last month of the school year. I'm not sure who the engineering genius was behind the building's design, but Underwood has a great deal of thermodynamic inertia. In other words, the building doesn't heat up quickly...but once the internal temperature rises, the classrooms retain their heat extremely well.
Yes, despite my assertion in last week's astronomy lesson that summer begins on June 21st in the Northern Hemisphere, my freshmen and juniors alike were stewing in their own juices, not to mention their belief that the school year is basically over. In fairness, they may be right. The two seniors in my chemistry classes are scheduled to take exams this week; freshmen have theirs starting next Monday. Once exams end, things get very, very interesting. The Powers That Be have provided an additional week following exams input grades and so forth, but the kids know better. Once final exams are completed, do they really have to come to school? And if they do...do they really have to learn? Do they really have to listen or pay attention? Why should this be any different than the rest of the year?
But there is a difference, and a serious one, in the form of school climate. And I'm not talking about the discipline issues, although there is a connection. I'm talking about the weather. Because let's be totally honest. When it's 90 degrees outside and the humidity is leaning just shy of thunderstorm territory, there is not a student in the world who wouldn't rather be doing something else. (And given how noisy and disruptive the kids got, hardly a teacher either!) Still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Underwood is a school, and so the education process had to go on with as much normalcy as possible.
Never mind that the water fountains don't work and the few kids who do bring in water have a tendency to throw it on each other in the hallways. Just ignore the special education students roaming the hallways because their teachers are missing in action. And please, please, please disregard the announcements wasting class time explaining about how hot it is as if we were not perceptive enough to notice that we could fry eggs on floorboards. Just keep on teaching! Keep those standards high and those failure rates low! Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!
Some teachers make concessions to the weather, but other than propping open the classroom windows, I tend to make no other efforts. My students complain and cuss me out. They vent and sweat and curse and ask why I do not get an electric fan like their other teachers. I tell them that I have no fan and attempt to move on, but there is a deeper reason for the situation. I am a proud non-member of the "fan club." In the past, I have brought fans into my room, both my own and those provided by the school, and I have found that on every occasion they have caused more frustration than good. Consider, a fan, even a rotating one, can only blow air a certain distance and cover a certain area of the classroom. On a good day, I'd bet the fan could directly influence the comfort levels of 1/4 of a classroom if all the kids were sitting in their seats. But the kids will crowd around the fan. They will trade seats. They will push and fight to get to the fan. On past occasions, they even knocked down a fan! (Ol' Boxy's blades will never be whole again...)
So rather than deal with that crap throughout the day, I embrace the heat...student comfort be damned. I have no fans in every sense of the word. And as one might expect, my students have come up with creative coping mechanisms...like crowding near the classroom door which they insist stays open even though people keep popping in, saying hello, and acting like clowns. Or rushing to get to class first so they can slump by the windows and do nothing. Or my personal favorite, putting their heads down and just doing nothing. Granted, the last of these is not ideal, but if I can get a few of my more disruptive students to adopt this tactic so much the better. Unfortunately, this remians the second most popular coping technique, right behind cussing out the teacher. At top rage, they reach levels of creativity in their profanity that would make a marine drill sergeant blush. The combination of high volume and high heat leads to a work environment reminiscent of a foundry...only without the metal. Here we forge education...also in every sense of the word.
The cussing however doesn't bother me that much on a personal level. As stated in previous posts, I'm not in this job to be popular. No, my fear is that the students will be so caught up in the heat of the moment complaining about such things (pun retroactively intended) that they will completely ignore the last little nuggets of knowledge I am trying to cram into the final weeks, such that when the final exams come they will fail...again...and I will have nothing with which to entice them during the final days before summer.
Except my warmth and personal charm, of course, but we all know how well that's worked in the past...
