Ridiculously cold.
By Angela Watson
Current outdoor temperature: 83 degrees.
I. Am. Freezing. In. My. Classroom.
It’s gotten so bad that I have taken to wearing turtlenecks, sweaters, jeans, and close-toed shoes, making for a rather uncomfortable recess duty (and some strange looks from parents at dismissal). I have stuffed all the classroom vents with newspaper and paper towels (see Exhibit A)…
….and then attempted to seal them shut entirely with a combination of poster board, packing tape, and stick pins (Exhibit B). Yet the air conditioning continues to blast in through my questionably resourceful barrier like a gale force wind, causing me to repair falling poster board and re-stuff with newspaper several times per week.
Did I mention that I also keep the windows open? (Exhibit C)
The kids’ hands are still ice cold (so are their noses, but don’t ask how I found that out). They sit shivering at their seats, slipping their arms out of their sleeves, trying to write with little hands sticking out all T-Rex like.
And it’s going to continue like this all winter long. In January, our high temperature outside will be around 65 (and we’ve already had a few cold fronts that were FAR lower than that). Yet the A/C has never and will never be turned off or down.
This infuriates me to no end when there is no money for teacher raises (or for the $20K in stipends that I lost this year–you knew I’d find a way to bring that back up, eventually). By a conservative estimate, the school system must spend close to a quarter million a month on electricity. 3 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR to freeze us like popsicles. Seriously?
So add ‘temperature’ to my seemingly endless list of Things I Can’t Control in My Classroom.
I am so over this. What is the point of living in Fort Lauderdale when your sandaled feet turn blue with cold eight hours a day?
My guess is that you all have temperature issues as well…an overabundance of or total lack of heat. What’s going on?!
Angela Watson
Founder and Writer
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HA! I teach in Michigan and my kids often do their work with their arms stuffed down into their shirts, too. But it’s not because our (non-existant)AC is too high; it’s because our heat is set so low and the outside temp is in the teens! Unfortunately our students don’t dress warmly enough, but you can bet that I have multiple layers on most days. Every now and then we just keep our coats on for the day. Nice to know that my school district is saving so much money by setting the heat low enough to freeze us all! It’s interesting to me that in such different places, we share a common trouble!
I feel your pain! Our elementary is housed in the ‘old building’ therefore we have individual A/C units that are LOUD and NOISY, so we turn them on and off every 5-15 mins throughout the day because either the students can’t hear me or I can’t hear them! Most of the year is hot and so the air HAS to be on but when its not being turned off because we can’t hear each other–we have to turn it off because it FREEZES the room! That can’t be good for the electricity bill–on/off..on/off..all day long!
Ugh, how annoying! It’s crazy to know so many teachers are dealing with this! “Little” issues like temperature can really make a big difference in the quality of teaching and learning.