I'm glad, in a way, that I'm back in the trailers after having been out on leave for three or four years. I'd forgotten about all the little twists and turns and surprises they held, and I guess I needed to be reminded. Period 7 yesterday I went to my class in trailer 4. Several students preceded me, and were sitting in their seats waiting for class. It was nothing short of diabolical. The thermostat read 99 degrees. I was pretty surprised because it was cooler yesterday than it had been the day before. How could this happen?
Of course, the heat, which we likely as not won't have at all between December and February, was on. Why wouldn't you have the heat going full blast when it's 75 degrees outside? Heaven forfend anyone should be anything remotely resembling comfortable in one of those frigging boxes of tin.
I was pretty happy I had the foresight to wear a short sleeve shirt. I called and informed the main office that we were going to the auditorium. I also filed a grievance demanding trailers be closed until and unless they were fixed. Custodian said they'd requested an emergency repair but no one had showed. They were hoping for today. Hope springeth eternal.
I went back later and noticed a sign saying go to auditorium. Evidently I'd neglected it when I arrived, as did all the students in my classroom. Perhaps they shouldn't have left the doors open, which signified enter to my students and me. I closed the doors in the boiling trailers so no one else would enter. I worried some overly zealous new teacher would go in there and show the whole world that nothing would stop her, certainly not a thermostat reading 99 degrees, likely because it doesn't go any higher.
I met a teacher who told me her students were quite upset at how miserable the trailers were on Wednesday. She's Chinese, and the students kept asking her, "Is it because we're Chinese?" Can you imagine going to school feeling like you were dumped in an inferior setting because of your ethnicity? Unfortunately, inferior settings are something we all get to share in a place where there simply isn't enough space, a place where there is no limit on how many students can come in. Amazingly, Eva Moskowitz gets to toss anyone she likes out of her place, and for all I know, they all come to us.
The disgrace belongs to New York City. It's unconscionable to say there is no limit to how many students can enter a space. However, that's policy. Our school has done well for New York City. Bloomberg, frothing at the mouth to destroy every comprehensive high school in the city, never laid a glove on us. Instead, he just overcrowded us, hoping we'd burst at the seems. It seems we we outlasted the son of a bitch.
Of course, that can't last forever. We'll have an annex in a few years, which should add a little bit of breathing room. Even so, and even after they haul away those horrific miserable trailers, we'll still have spaces that no kid should learn in.
But hey, let's find a new place for Amazon. Jeff Bezos needs parking for his helicopter.
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