Back at school

Perhaps my travels home from Korea/Shanghai, standing out in a snow storm for hours in the middle of the dead night, might've been a clue as for what was to come in the week ahead at school. No matter how frozen/nearly frost-bitten I get, and no matter how much clothing I am wearing or whether I have hand warmers and hot water bottles, I will never be fully "prepared" to endure the cold.

The cold weather continued in Ningbo, going back to a school building that was not suited for the wet temperatures hovering right above freezing. This region is just not prepared for long spans of freezing weather. Buildings are not insulated or centrally heated; aircon units that have double cool/heat functions barely put a dent in the frigid conditions of individual class rooms, while the hallways are drafty and damp.

I posted this on Facebook, but for my readers who don't partake in that social networking site...

You know it's cold inside your classroom/school in China when...

... you can see your breath

... your printer steams as it warms up, and moisture is released from the papers when they run through the machine, billowing steamy, puffy clouds into the air around your desk

... parts of the bathroom floor are frozen after the ayi mops

... your windowsills have ice on them

... your whiteboard markers won't write more than a few letters on the freezing-cold whiteboard unless you continually breath hot air onto the surface... every 5 

... your toes freeze inside your boots because they have contact with the freezing cold tile floors!

In case you didn't get it from the examples, that's all to say that it was ridiculously cold at AIAN on our first Monday back! And my heater wasn't even elevating the temp one degree from the frigidness of our unheated buildings and hallways :(

I wimped out and moved my classes to the small computer lab when my kids started complaining,

"My hand frozen. Can't write."

"Teacher, too cold! I see smoky air in front of face." (referring to breath/steam, of course)

"Ms. L, why do you call it heater if it blows cold air? It broken."

As it turns out, I wasn't the only one with a freezing classroom (nearly half the walls of my classroom are one-paned glass windows, as is the case for many other teachers). Another teacher on my hall had to wrap her fluffy coat around a kid who was literally turning blue in her class. Ridiculous.

One day, I got nearly all the way to school
before I realized that I was still wearing
my slippers. Back to school blues.

Practically the entire third floor of our building was without heat, and our music teacher just downright walked out of school on Monday because her fingers were too frozen to play the piano in order to facilitate class (pointless to be at school!). Other teachers went home to work there, where at least they had some sort of heat (though many of our heaters at home are on the fritz and not functioning properly either; our living room heater sometimes randomly decides to spew cold air every few cycles!). Ridiculous.

On Monday night, I left my "heater" appliance "on" all night (it pained me to think of all the energy this school is wasting right now because it's not insulated, nor are energy-efficient units installed in the rooms). I was hopeful that it would magically fix itself and start spewing warmer air than it was yesterday. When I walked in this morning, a waft of only-slightly warmer air greeted my icy cheeks. It's probably 10ºC (50ºF) in my room now, instead of FREEZING like yesterday. At least my students didn't complain as much. I handed out hand warmers before speeches today.

Yeah, that's a hole in my wall that they STILL
have yet to come in and fix. Maintenance's
suggestion? Stuff it with paper and put
TAPE over it. I still feel a cold draft.

They should've cancelled school on account of the cold. Or better yet, the powers at be in the maintenance and grounds dept should've thought ahead (all of one man and some guards, in our tiny school's case, plus various workers we contract with). Wait, what? Thinking ahead? TIC (This. Is. China.) What would've been logical would've been to have come in 3-4 days before break ended, to test ALL heating units on campus, and get kinks worked out of the system, new heaters installed outside of school hours when workmen creating a ruckus is nothing but distracting...

Speaking of butts... I have a story about the  day after my heater finally was fixed (they interrupted one my afternoon Eco-Team class with a bunch of already hard-to-control, rowdy 10-year-old boys, to weld and be noisy and open the windows to the freezing cold air GRRR!). Workmen were still around the premises, trying to fix other broken units, install new ones, etc. These guys are completely in their own worlds, perhaps not realizing what educators and students are doing in a school on a normal day... why would we need to have peace and quiet without distractions or interruptions while studying, or concentrating, or video recording speech presentations? So anyway, there's a knock at my classroom door while one of my students is giving his speech. He glances over to me. I wave away the disturbance, "Keep going." Again. Another, louder knock at the door. "Just ignore it." The door opens, and a repairman begins to walk in. I gesture wildly, as I'm still filming my student speeches. Get out!! He leaves. Two minutes later, he's out walking on the ledge outside the window (did I mention I'm on the third floor?), checking the aircon units outside the building. And then he settles down to work. The elf finishes his speech and then gives me a horrified look, as he gestures towards the window. I thought someone would be hanging from the ledge or something, but no. There was a naaaasty butt crack hanging out of this repairman's jeans. Apparently plumbers don't have exclusive rights to showing crack. (The only good crack is tan crack, right Janeenerz? White crack's bad!) I tried to get my 7th graders to be mature about the situation, averting their eyes, but the one girl in the class, who happened to be nearest to the window, with the man's hiney hanging out right next to her head, really freaked. Distractions galore. I nearly flipped a switch that day, I was so fed up with China and irritable from the cold and lack of (what I, in my North American cultural context/background, deem to be) efficient, reasonable solutions. TIC. TIC. TIC.

Please click on this image to
read the journal entry up close.
This was written by a 10th grader.

And now, speaking of speeches, a little update on my ELL classes/actual school. One full week back after winter vacay, and kids are just finally getting back into the groove of things (speaking English, doing hw--what's that? Just getting them to finish projects and turn things in last week was like pulling teeth!). We're finally wrapping up our book report projects--which were quite involved with essays and speeches and posters and presentations and vocabulary and quizzes, and additional assignments. Finally we've just finished reviewing peer feedback, teacher and self evaluations, and now I just need to finish grading papers! 304 journal entries corrected, revised, and reflected upon. Unit nearly complete. Party tomorrow if I can't throw anything else together? Let's play Catch Phrase!

I'm now sick because I went and got
my cupping done for the winter season.
(have it done once a season = every 3 mo.)
Immediately on Sunday, I got a sore throat
and had full-blown cold symptoms within 12
hours. These toxins are STRONG!
Don't worry. I'm flushing them out of my
system with SO much water. And a cleanse
detox herbal supplement regimen.
{enlarge photo at your own risk}

(I CANNOT BELIEVE I put in an 11-hour day today while sick. It's like I'm going back to my college days when I pressed myself to the max and didn't take care of my body. I. Need. Sleep... but I'm so congested I can't!)

The semester ends tomorrow (Wednesday) at this really awkward and inconvenient time, in the middle of a week. And our school operates on an A-B-A-B-C-day schedule. So we're ending on an A day, and starting a new semester, with new students, and new classes, and new scheduling... ON A "B" DAY?! Where is the logic and sense in that? Seeing only some of my students? What am I supposed to do for lesson planning? And what am I supposed to on Friday with the short classes when I see them ALL? Furthermore, I'm full-blown head-cold sick right now, so I have not the energy to submit grades by tomorrow, AND plan lessons for the schedule I just found out about YESTERDAY, with several new students being thrown at me in a crazy overlapping schedule. More about that later.

This is all of the school update I can handle for now! (and probably for you readers as well)