I'm sure there must have been exceptions, but I can't recall any. You see, in my mind there has always been a heat wave around this time of year. As our temperatures hover around 31°C/90°F, I'm feeling like a chicken on a rotisserie and remembering all of those early back-to-school days when I was teaching. The heat wave seemed to happen every single darn year, just when one wants to be as fresh as a daisy to make good initial impressions on those darlings who sat before me eager to soak up my pearls of wisdom. Instead, they had to make do with beholding my sweaty armpits.
The luck of the draw always had me in a hot classroom with poor ventilation and oodles of heat retention. I had four main rooms that were mine over the course of thirty years, and they were all hot ones. Parts of my schools were even reconstructed from time to time, which meant that AC was added — but not for this AC. Nope: I was never fortunate enough to occupy one of those AC'ed rooms — even long after I had paid my dues and had earned it.
Never ever would it occur to me to complain to you dear folk. I'm just reminiscing.
That's all.
The only room that had AC when I was growing up was the computer studies room. No one took that class back then because we didn't know what the heck it was!
ReplyDeleteLove Di ♥
A school room with airconditioning? We had to open a window! And from looking at the school when I pass it now, it hasn't changed much!
ReplyDeleteI too remember back-to-school heat waves. We always got a new outfit which was usually something like a wool skirt sweater yet I wanted to wear it even if it was hot.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember heat waves in school - maybe the high heat we've been having here lately 90+ has affected my memory - but I'm sure that central A/C was not available in the parachial grade school I attended...way back when.
ReplyDeleteMy school years were spent in New Jersey and Massachusetts. I don't remember the school days as needing AC but I'm sure we didn't have any then ... needed or not.
ReplyDeleteNow that I live in the South I can't imagine how people existed here without AC.
My school years were spent in New Jersey and Massachusetts. I don't remember the school days as needing AC but I'm sure we didn't have any then ... needed or not.
ReplyDeleteNow that I live in the South I can't imagine how people existed here without AC.
Heat waves and school are two words which never came together during my youth...However, there were several times when we were ordered to keep our outdoor coats one, when the radiators had packed up! If the thermometer had fallen below 48'F, we would have been sent home, but it perversely managed to hover just above that, to our eternal disgust.
ReplyDeleteWe you know QMM, older than dirt never had A/C in school. Now when I went to college in the 1980's, one of those nontraditional students, it was a different story. I know you had it hard cause those kids got to get out of that room and whiz all around. I understand just reminiscing.
ReplyDeleteQMM
I don't suppose I remember back-to-school heat waves from when I was a kid, but memories are vivid from my teaching days.
ReplyDeleteAc--just today my husband and I drove by a school with all its windows open. My husband remarked--there's a school without AC (not you, of course but air-conditioning.)
ReplyDeleteI am with you on needing AC in summer heat waves.
Of course you would not complain, only reminisce ;-)
Poor AC! I bet the heat made the students squirrellier than usual -- ugh!
ReplyDeleteMe, too.
ReplyDeletethe grandkid phoned last night to report on her first day of school. Her teacher had a fan in her classroom, said Audrey, but she did not turn it on!
Monday was the first day back for the Francophone schools - an even worse timing for heat than ours was.
I haven't been reading you because i thought you weren't posting---so my drattenfrat blog roll told me.
ReplyDeleteOf course, as you know, schools I went to were hewn from the very rock and kept cool by the ice age. very handy, that
Never had an AC at any school I attended but we did have a fan at college.......can't believe how warm it is in ON, I had my furnace on yesterday and a fire in my fireplace it was so cold and rained all day. Today not too bad, we did see the sunshine....Hugs
ReplyDeleteI agree about this time of year. Kids go back to school in August, and to me that's the worst time of the whole year to be in school! August is the height of summer weather.
ReplyDeleteI still find it hard to believe that we never had A/C in our house growing up. Now that we have it I wonder how we ever lived without it.
ReplyDeleteSept feels like Sept here. Wouldn't mind a few more hottish days.