I had gotten into the habit of
wearing polyester, or heavy, cotton
blouses by mid May, fabric that should spare me the embarrassment of unsightly
sweat stains left by pools of perspiration being seen by my students. It was ninety two degrees and my classroom, was
not an oasis of learning as it should
be but rather, a prison. Kids were
forced to stay against their will, as we teachers were told to do everything in
our power to ensure the students stayed the entire three hours to complete
their exams. It was Regents week, and
instead of students using all of their allotted time, several attempted to
leave within the hour, only a third of the time provided to answer several
multiple choice questions, constructed response questions, and in the case of
English and History, two essays. The day
before, I had proctored the Earth Science Regents and could not help but think
of the water cycle as my skin baked: my sweat being the precipitation, my back,
a mountain with a high gradient experiencing surface run off, and my shirt, the
earth in which the precipitation that becomes ground water absorbs.
It was the third time that Karina
attempted to hand me her exam, but I refused the exchange, as we were
instructed to do; once an exam was handed in, a teacher could not give it back
to the child. Nor could I speak directly
to one student about the exam, so I generalized and began the usual reminder to
“Make sure you’ve completed the entire test before handing it in” to the whole
class while looking directly at Karina, signaling her to sit back down, though
she did so reluctantly. After about
fifteen more minutes in the sweltering heat, she couldn’t take it anymore and
stormed to my desk, throwing down her exam.
“I’m done.”
I checked her exam and realized she
had not completed an entire essay.
“Karina, you didn’t even write the DBQ!”
“I don’t care. I’m irritable. I’m hot.
I just want to leave now and take a freakin’ shower. I’ll take it again in August. At least summer school will be somewhere else.”
She was right. Schools that weren’t
air conditioned always held summer school at a different location, which seemed
to be the humane thing to do.
Unfortunately, the powers that be failed to consider the days that reached
July temperatures in late Spring and late Summer, when schools reopened for
business; our students have experienced many a miserable day in when temperatures
had reached ninety degrees or felt like it with high humidity. In my eleven years of teaching, I had seen my
share of nose bleeds and fainting spells in the classroom due to lack of
ventilation and air conditioning. We
were told to tell students to “rise to the occasion,” despite the fact that the
heat often made them want to put their heads down. When we would complain, we’d always be told
that schools built in the fifties were not equipped to sustain the level of
electricity required for air conditioning.
The next common sense move would then be to rewire the school; however,
individual schools were expected to fork out the thousands of dollars that
would fund such a project. School
principals complain they don’t even have enough money for books and supplies,
forcing teachers to spend thousands of their own dollars to create a classroom
environment that would be deemed effective according to Charlotte
Danielson. Expecting school
administrators to use their budget to rewire their school buildings so that
their students can learn in comfort was as ridiculous as expecting for teachers
to be supported rather than torn apart by the government and the media. We were all expected to grin and bear it.
But in recent years teachers are
choosing not to stay but instead to leave, leave to places that are easier to
teach in because ultimately, we are evaluated for more than just our performance
these days, but by the performance of our students more than ever. With forty percent of our rating being based
on student exam scores, exams that are developmentally inappropriate,
deliberately tricky and exceedingly lengthy, teachers who teach in the inner
city already have enough on their plates to have to deal with failing, old
infrastructure; trying to get students who are several grade levels below and
often cannot or will not put more effort into their studies to be present, both
physically and mentally, in a building that is uncomfortable to be in for more
than twenty minutes is a headache that is sure to have many teachers sprinting
toward the exit door.
Old school buildings lack
appropriate cooling systems, sometimes lack heat on frigidly cold winter days and
have hideous cracks in the walls that are often in serious need of paint jobs. Plain and simple, they are ugly. My students look at the building in disgust,
labeling it a “bum ass school” because of its glossy cement walls and prehistoric
chalk boards. When we do get heat, it’s
heat that we call, “project heat,” that cranks up the pipes with loud banging
noises that disturb learning and warm the rooms beyond the point of relief from
the cold, getting so hot that we attempt to open our windows to average the
temperature out. Mice and cockroaches
seem to lurk inside the walls that have so many more nooks and crannies to
reside in than newer buildings would. The
job of beautifying the learning environment is always bestowed upon the teacher,
who spends tons of money on pretty bulletin board paper and borders, and time
crafting beautiful artsy “stuff” to hang and stick all over the place, but it’s
no more of a disguise than a silk hat on a pig.
Charter schools have managed to
make our school “living arrangements” even more uncomfortable by taking many of
our classrooms and offices, forcing students and teachers into tight spaces to
teach and learn. Our students have to
share communal spaces like the cafeteria and gym with them, adding insult to
injury because the space was already shared with two other schools at our
site. Many students ask teachers if they
can eat with them in their classrooms because there is no room to sit down in
the cafeteria since our school has been assigned to 6th period lunch
while 4th and 5th periods are the designated lunch times
for the other schools in the building.
Teachers, though in dire need of a break away from the kids, consent
because they empathize with their students.
Because the charter school is taking our office space as well, I will be
moved to a new location to complete my IEPs and other special education
coordination duties, a room that just so happens to be next to the
cafeteria. With all these lunch periods,
the loud noise will surely distract me from doing my work, as will the students
who receive extended time on exams which
I will proctor. Still, I will be
expected to complete all of my IEPs on time and my students will be expected to
pass their exams and not be frustrated at the loud screams from the cafeteria,
or the sweat trickling down their backs from lack of air conditioning or
excessive heat, or the potential vermin that may scurry across their feet.
The temptation to teach somewhere
else that is new, clean, beautiful and comfortable is strong. However, when I think of the students who can’t leave, it makes me stick
around. Still, sharing in their misery
just doesn’t seem like a sufficient form of action. I feel like I should be doing more, finding a
way to lead my students to a more promising land, a new school that they can ooh and ahh over as they walk through the halls; a school that will allow
them to escape from the scorching heat on hot spring and summer days instead of
the other way around; a school that makes them feel not only safe, but
comfortable; a school they can feel content to call their own. Surely I am not the only teacher who thinks
of leaving in this way, that is, leaving together as a school community,
thinking of not only herself but the best interest of her students. If it was possible, to move one’s students to
a new school, it would have been done already, wouldn’t it have? Or are all teachers so used to shit that no
one’s even tried?
