Tag: climate

I don’t even know what I want any more

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I feel like I haven’t done anything at work all week except for talk about whether there was going to be school tomorrow or not. It’s supposed to snow all night and into tomorrow morning, with upper-end predictions being six inches of snow and a tenth of an inch of ice mixed into that, and that’s pretty ugly. The district has changed their mind– and sent out emails about said mind-changing– about what another closure would look like approximately nineteen thousand times this week. On Tuesday I was confidently told by a Downtown Person that we weren’t going to do e-learning at all if we had to cancel, and would just add a day to the end of the school year. By the end of that day we’d received five different emails about our procedure for synchronous e-learning, which are the Covid-style days where we’re in Google Meets all day. By today it was back to “traditional e-learning,” which caused widespread confusion because no one really knows what the word traditional means when it’s used in that sentence. Then they clarified that, without also clarifying that we aren’t allowed four asynchronous days during the school year and this would be the fourth, which was what set off all the speculation about what we were doing in the first place. Maybe we’ll lose the professional development day in March and just have school that day? Nobody fucking knows.

Incidentally, I recognize that this would require quite a roll of the dice, but if I go through the snow totals for each day for today through next Monday, I get the sum of eighteen inches of snow over the long weekend (Presidents’ Day is Monday, remember) which might cause fuckery with school being open on Tuesday.

I’m predicting a two-hour delay. I have moved into the I Have Shit to Do God Damn It point of the year, which means I don’t really want any more delays or closures, except I kind of do, because who wants to go to work if they don’t have to? Nobody. On top of that, it’s a Thursday before a four-day weekend when everyone has spent the entire week openly speculating that there will be no school on Thursday. What this means is that a lot of our kids will conclude that if there is school, it’s unfair, and they won’t show up anyway.

One way or another I am absolutely not making any Goddamn lesson plans for tomorrow until I know what’s going on. There’s no point.

Blech.

We’re all gonna die

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

It was 72 degrees today, and it is not yet March, and we’re all definitely going to die because of that, but because I live in Indiana, in the next twelve hours we are expecting high winds, tornadoes, rain, snow, a fifty-degree temperature drop, and hail.

we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes we don’t have alligators we don’t have hurricanes we don’t have earthquakes

Go home, Indiana, you’re drunk

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

You may recall– it has only been a couple of days, after all– that it was blazingly hot in my classroom all week, and that I actually wore shorts to work one day this week.

I woke up this morning and was greeted with this:

A lot of that has melted off already, but from what I’m seeing in the weather forecast we are due for 68 degrees on Tuesday and then at least a chance of additional snow on Wednesday. I don’t know who the hell was responsible for proofreading 2024 but someone deserves a Goddamn refund.

I’m wearing shorts tomorrow

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

Forgive me for splattering my horrifying visage across your computer screen or whatever digital thingamabob you’re using to view this, but what I’m wearing is actually kind of important to this story. It was eighty-five degrees in my classroom when I got to work, again. I bought that pullover over the weekend, on clearance, for fourteen bucks. It is wonderfully soft and while it is warm it’s not quite as warm as it looks (that’s a good thing) and I like the pattern and the color. I spent the whole weekend planning to wear it today and looking forward to it.

As I was walking into the building this morning, I thought to myself that it was probably going to be hellishly hot in my classroom and I wasn’t going to get to wear my nice new pullover because it was going to be too hot. And I was exactly right. I didn’t last into second hour, especially since I insisted on drinking my Goddamned coffee, temperature in the room be damned.

We got an email that the Thingamawhosis had broken, and that there was already a guy in the building repairing it, and that classroom temperatures would start coming down soon. By lunchtime it was still 80 degrees, and I sent a cautiously worded follow-up email, which generated a second message to the whole staff that the Thingamawhosis had been fixed but then it promptly broke again. So, just sweat, I guess.

It’s supposed to be in the mid-sixties tomorrow, which is one of those painful things where it’s sort of been winter for a little while and warm weather is going to feel nice but it is also terrifying because it’s fucking February and it’s not supposed to be in the mid-sixties, and the nice weather is a sign of the fucking world ending. One way or another, I’m wearing shorts, because fuck it, that’s why. I strongly suspect that wearing shorts to work will result in the Thingamawhosis not only already being fixed when I arrive, but magically working at higher capacity than normal for the entire day, resulting in the exact same kids who told me it was hot when they walked into my classroom every single class period, as if I didn’t already fucking know, coming in and complaining about being cold.

At least cold 8th graders smell a lot better than hot ones.