My latest “I’m not in Kansas anymore” moment came a couple of weeks ago during my afternoon math class with 95 6th graders. We’re in the middle of our hot season, and the temperature in the classroom was easily 110 degrees. With the glare from the sun, the blackboard is hard to see from the front corners of the room, so I had to close the door while writing at the edge of the board. This cut off basically all airflow to the room. In the time it took me to write the definition of a histogram, almost every student had taken off his or her uniform shirt (for some unfathomable reason, they almost all wear undershirts) and were using them as fans. I looked out to see a sea of swirling shirts and sweating students.
My first thought was, “Huh, this looks a lot like Homer Hankie time at a Minnesota Twins game.” Now, I’m sure the school has a rule somewhere about kids being required to actually wear their school uniforms, but at the time I was sweating buckets, and I knew the temperature in the back of the classroom- where the older, bigger kids sit- was probably 10 degrees hotter. I decided to let the rule slide.Needless to say, we finished class early that day.
Sweating has become a recreational activity for me. On a cool day, if I sit in one spot in the shade fanning myself and there’s a breeze I can almost stop sweating. The slightest activity however, such as turning the page of my book, brings back the perspiration with full force. On a hot day I feel like I just got out of the swimming pool.
Constantly. I’m never more than five feet from a water bottle, and when I drink I immediately see an increase in my sweat production.
It’s like the water doesn’t even bother to go down my throat. My front porch gets sun pretty much all day; it heats up so much that I can’t even walk barefoot on it in the middle of the night.
I have two saving graces. One, my cannery. This is a large clay pot full of water that I keep sitting on moist sand. Magically the water stays cool. It’s not exactly a refrigerator, but it works pretty darn well. My second saving grace are mangoes. Mango season coincides with the hot season, and there’s nothing quite as refreshing as eating a juicy mango after a long day chasing kids…uh, I mean teaching kids.
The hot season is almost over now though…I think. We’ve gotten several rain showers and one decent storm in the past couple of weeks.
The first rain storm kept the temperatures under 95 degrees for almost 12 hours, but the subsequent storms have done better. Last week we had two days that actually felt comfortable. Of course, I’m not quite sure what that translates to in terms of degrees. I was talking to my mom on the phone last week and told her- honestly- that it didn’t feel too bad at the moment. Then I looked at my thermometer: 98 degrees. What am I going to do when I have to go back to a Minnesota winter?
One more thing. Last week I gave a series of lessons on the Beatles to my English class. They had never heard of them, and I thought that was an atrocity. I talked about their music, their importance to music history, and their influence on the culture of the 1960’s in America and Europe. I brought in my iPod and some speakers I borrowed from a friend, and we listened to several songs. The favorite: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. For the grand finale, I busted out my guitar and taught them “Let it Be”. If you have ever questioned the importance of arts education, question no more. I’m not a very good guitarist, and my vocal skills are…decidedly sub-par. But they loved it. We had a great time, and they demanded lyrics to more songs. They also wanted to dance. “Let it Be” isn’t exactly a dancing kind of tune, but luckily my iPod has plenty of songs from one of the most popular American artists they do know: Micheal Jackson.
(Why do they know him? Remember “We are the World”?) “Thriller” was a big hit, as was “Billy Jean”. I think they think I’m crazy- what teacher plays music and sings and lets them dance during class?- but that’s OK once in a while. Now I have to somehow write a test on what we learned.
Hope all is well.
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