Education Funding

Hot for Teachers

By Liana Loewus — June 09, 2011 1 min read
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It’s been in the upper 90’s this week in the greater Washington area—which has felt like over 100 degrees with the humidity. I visited a school yesterday in Maryland with no air conditioning in the classrooms. It was swampy and downright hot. The female teachers I saw were wearing cotton dresses and sandals, and still had a visible sheen of sweat. The kids were dismissed two hours early because of the heat. (The main office, however, was comfortably cool.)

With recent talk about classroom stress, I’m thinking school temperature can be another factor. Is your school air-conditioned in the summer? Heated in the winter? How does temperature control affect student learning? And teacher effectiveness?

(That said, both the kids and teachers I saw were remarkably resilient. There wasn’t a complaint from either side during the lesson. Kudos to them all for persevering right up until the end of the school year and with such good nature.)

A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.