Friday, August 31, 2007

Rollling Black-Outs and Education?

Eleven thirty-five a.m., just sat down to lunch in the cafeteria with about one hundred-eighty students and fellow teachers, and the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. As you can just imagine, the squeals and screams that erupted were deafining. Just another "CUC Rolling Blackout".

After getting them to quiet "a little", we finished lunch and went back to our already heating-up classroom. There we stayed, my students and I, trying to learn and teach in that environment until almost two p.m.. Does anyone do their best in an uncomfortable environment?

Some schools contacted CUC, found out it would be out longer than two hours, and let their students go home. We could not contact CUC, because phones are tied to power. This meant that we just had to endure. One cannot teach computer, use the overhead projector, or a Power Point presentation if the power is off. This can make teaching very dificult! It is not always easy to come up with enough creative teaching methods to fill two hours in the dark. CUC and the schools have to find a better solution to "keep the power on" for education's sake.

3 comments:

Bree Reynolds said...

damn, i haven't taught with powerpoitn since i moved here!! i'd be happy for a white board to replace my green chalk board.

Bree Reynolds said...

next time, have them write letters to CUC, the gov. and the legislature.

Lil' Hammerhead said...

I agree with you about the need to "fix" our power situation, but I remember a quote by the former Commissioner of Education, who came out on local news after a slew of power outages and kids being sent home. She said, "the power outages were not conducive to education". She went on to talk about the heat in the classrooms etc.

My point is... yes, power is a plus, but sending kids home from school is a whole lot less conducive to their education.

When we were in school we went days without power and had outages all of the time. No one was sent home. None of our classrooms were airconditioned. We were fine.

So, yes... power is a plus, but not an absolute neccesity and not one that is reason enough to send kids home from school.