82 Degrees

Today was the end of my first week long term subbing. (Technically my week was 4 days since I started on Tuesday but oh well).

Yesterday was a fairly difficult day for me due to some miscommunications... But I'm almost glad it happened because it showed me how awesome my co-workers are.

I didn't sleep much last night because I keep replaying the day over and over in my head; you know those times when your brain won't just shut off. I think I dozed for about 4 hours.

In the morning one of my wonderful co-workers brought me a hot chai tea from starbucks. It was the most perfect thing I didn't even know I needed that morning. My eyes were burning when I blinked and my head was equal parts foggy and still lucidly spinning over previous events. The tea was warm and I just stood in one place and sipped it for a good three minutes. I carried that cup of perfection to the copy room, the library... all my morning errands around the school. It cleared my mind and woke me up.

The rest of the day was just as warm as that tea.

Because my room's AC went on the fritz!!

Let me back up and put my day in context.

Every Friday my school shaves 5 minutes off every class period and has a tutoring session to prepare students for state testing. The result is the whole class period order gets a bit shuffled. The kids do not react well to getting jostled out of their routine.

Add that to it being Friday, not only just Friday but the first Friday after a full week without a Snow Day reprieve in 3 weeks. They're already going stir-crazy.

Meanwhile...

My room had been steadily increasing in temperature all day. It started at 7:45am at a normal "empty" 72. I say empty because once a classroom is full of adolescents, the temp shoots up a minimum of 3-5 degrees from I don't know, something like, puberty heat.

10am: 75

Noon: 77

2pm: 79

By 3pm and at the start of my last class of the day my room is registering 82 degrees.

The air is not moving. It's like breathing soup. There was seriously a 10 degree difference between the hallway and the entrance to my room.

Once my some 20-odd Speech students piled into the room the environment became straight up unbearable.

My students are supposed to be working on a testimony/eulogy about a person in their life they cared about. My classroom was so sweltering, the kids were antsy, I just couldn't take it.

Me: "OK! Everyone up! We're going outside!"

I was immediately faced with a bunch of blank stares. My own mind was whirling, hoping that it was indeed okay that I take my band of sweaty students outside out of the sauna.

We went out a side door into a sloped area in the shade of the school. (There are a lot of s's in that sentence...) We sat in a loose circle and went around one by one doing the exercise we would have completed sitting in desks.

The kids got very deep and emotional when talking about a person that meant a lot to them. Anytime that I let myself forget the kinds of lives a lot of these kids have, they remind me in the most profound ways. These 12/13 years old sat in that grassy circle and talked about choosing sides after a divorce (sometimes divorceS), calling 911 in a parking lot while a family member had a heart attack, losing a sibling to death too soon and feeling judged at 12 years old for their "lifestyle choices."

After about 40 minutes we went inside (there was a moment when we realized the side door had locked behind us and I thought I was going to have to traipse through the school's front lobby with my entire class. Then someone opened the door) and the bell rang ending that long Friday and thus the week closed out for me rather quietly.

The Speech classes will be working on these personal speeches for the next week and a half. I'm both concerned and (kind of interestingly) anticipating hearing the completed speeches.

The more time I spend teaching, the more I actually learn from the students.

And I really hope my AC is fixed by Monday.