Chill out, literally.
It is the coldest I have been in a long time. I don’t mind it and the real winter is actually a little refreshing, but I am spoiled. When indoors, I prefer to have heat. I know, I’m a wimp. Bloggy buddies, it was so cold today I am STILL chilled. Not outside, well, yes outside too…but INSIDE. The boiler went out at school and we spent the day bundled up, still having class. It was not 60 degrees in any room…wait, I lie. I think it was 62 in one room. I know that doesn’t seem very cold, and it isn’t. When it is 25 outside and you are trying to conduct class in a less than insulated Cold War era building, it’s cold. I didn’t take my coat or scarf off all day! Admin went back and forth, back and forth. I understand the dilemma. If you release school today, what happens over the next several days when there is no guarantee that the boiler will hold out even if it is fixed? When you dismiss how long is it going to take to get all the car riders picked up? You know, I get it…really…but it was DANG cold.
My across the street classroom is frequently cold, but we manage to take the chill off when all the warm bodies are in there. Yesterday the nice lady across the hall felt sorry for us and gave me her oil heater thingy. Why isn’t there heat in my classroom? There’s a story there. Over the summer they prepared the room to be a large conference room and painted the radiators. I don’t know what they painted the radiators with, but when that steam things starts pushing through it heats up and the fumes from the painted radiators are unbearable.
So there was a choice to be made:
1. Very cold room in the main building
2. Asphyxiation in my regular room
My first class met in the back of the lecture hall while another teacher taught in the front. My last class met in the theater where we drove the rest of the building nuts with our trash can drumming.
What will tomorrow hold? I hope a warm classroom, or at least cool and comfortable, with no fumes. I found it annoying that a nearby middle school did not meet today because their heat didn’t work. I found it ironic that an Alabama prison moved its inmates to another location today because their heat didn’t work. A teacher I work with commented on the other school. “They can play a football championship game in this weather but not have school.” Um, lady, I’m from Alabama, that isn’t strange AND playing a sport in the cold or choosing to cheer your child in the cold is heck of lot different that being required to sit in the cold and try to concentrate on learning.
Brrrr, where’s my blanket.
