There is a ridiculous editorial in the Advocate today. It's so pointless that I'm surprised it ran. The title was "School closings require good reason” and, after a paragraph of jibberish about how superintendents make a lot of money, it made the point that kids should not have been sent home in the 97 degree heat on Monday and Tuesday.
Well, what a koinkydink, I'm a teacher in a room with no AC, so I whipped out a response. Here it is below. I posted it as a comment on Topix and sent another version (without the Stamford Talk "DUH") to the editor. I hope it gets published.
Dear editor:
You SHOULD have visited the schools before you wrote this.
I teach in one of the un-ACd schools and it was by far the worst in my ten years of teaching. The heat and humidity were nauseating to all of us. You didn't do much research if you only heard a "few reports."
I don't understand your nasty attitude about kids needing to toughen up. If you were in the schools, you would know how nice most kids are and how hard they work. The kids tried to tough it out, but all we could do was sit and look at each other listlessly, and then when it was time to change classes, wade through slick, humid halls with 700 middle schoolers. School is for learning, not for toughening up, and no learning could go on in humid, hot, 100 degree rooms.
It's laughable that you say the "creative" teachers moved to the ACd spaces. I'm going to give you a big Stamford Talk DUH on that. That's what we all did, but there was not enough space for the hundreds of kids who were in the un-ACd rooms. That's why kids were sent home. It was the right decision.
You seem to want kids to suffer. If it makes you feel better, don't worry, it's "uncomfortable" all of June and August. Please, feel free to pick a 95 degree day to come visit and sit in my room for an hour at 2pm. Actually, I'll sit; you can stand and teach.
I think it is so odd that whoever wrote the piece was not even IN a school building on those hot days! It seemed like someone just felt like complaining about schools... maybe that person should toughen up!
Friday, June 13, 2008
Rrrrr Stamford Talk Angry at Advocate Editorial
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6 comments:
Good for you. I'm not a teacjer, but I was also agitated by that editorial. Shame on the writter and shame on the editor.
Don't disagree with you at all and hope you get your letter in - now I'll let you in on a bit of a scoop - The big super did NOT want to make the decision and kept calling the HD to make it for him on Monday morning!. It is his job and he was chicken! (Not a rooster, like you have been looking for elsewhere in Stamford, lol). What can I say, an intelligent person would have closed them early Monday and Tuesday, but we know where any other discussion leads...
You have a legit complaint, buy my kids are in an air conditioned school, yet it had to be closed because Stamford union contracts require that if one closes in this situation, they all have to. 'Splain that? Or why three of the four last days of school are half days? What a waste.
I wonder if the Advocate editorial writer would leave his six-year-old in an un-air-conditioned car and tell him to quit bellyaching, because he might just have to lay roof tile someday in the hot hot sun. Coddled little %#%#$^!-er needs to toughen up and suck it up!
Did the editorial writer bother to leave his presumably air-conditioned office on those days? Did he send a reporter? (Joe Pisano would have never written such an editorial.)
Sure it's tough on some parents, but do they want their kids to get heat stroke? They know what to do on snow days, don't they?
Having said that, I think it's a scandal that there are school buildings that are not air-conditioned.
congrats on getting published!
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