Cold in the Classroom

Item

Title (Dublin Core)

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

If you have ever been in a middle school classroom, feeling cold is probably not the first thing that you think of. One might think of rowdy kids, perhaps non-inviting smells, stuffy air, but not necessarily the feeling of cold. After going home on March 13, 2020, I was forced to work remotely for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is still crazy to think how quickly everything changed from normal life to the furthest thing from it—just two days before the end of in-person schooling, I was still planning on going on the eighth grade Washington, DC trip! Anyway, going into the 2020-21 school year, because teachers were allowed to return to their classrooms (even though school would remain in distance for the foreseeable future), I decided that I would go into my classroom and work from there. I figured that it would help create a sense of normalcy in my own life while offering a familiar background to my students. After a few d ays of w orking from school without any students, I noticed how cold it was in my classroom. On a normal school day, I would turn on the air conditioning fairly early in the morning, being that the room would become warm and stuffy shortly after the students arrived. Even with it warm outside, I was noticing myself running the heater well into the afternoon. Without the heater, my classroom would quickly become unbearably cold! With brick walls and only a thin layer of carpet over a concrete floor, it is clear why it was so cold. I was just one person in a room that would normally have around 30—my body heat alone wasn't going to heat up the room! It is amazing to think that a silly little thing like the temperature of my classroom kind of got me down. No matter what I did to try and simulate normal life, it was just impossible for life to be normal, and that nagging cold was there to remind me of that fact. Just writing this down, I can feel the cold on my arms and legs, and I have a n urge to go and get a blanket, put on a sweatshirt, or turn on the heater. Come to think about it, I can also feel the pain in my lower back from sitting in front of a computer all day! In addition to the sense of touch/feeling being noticeably different, I have to say, the absence of, shall we say, interesting smells has also been out of the ordinary for my middle school classroom.

I really cannot complain all too much when it comes to my experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; I am lucky enough to still be employed, I can work at home if I wanted to, and no one all too close to me has had the disease. A great many people around the globe have had their lives shattered in the past year, so I really should be counting my blessings. With that said, I feel as if the coldness of my classroom somewhat symbolizes the isolation that I (and many others) are feeling during this trying time. The simple fact that there are not 30+ individuals in the room is causing the cold and, again, it is a nagging reminder that the world is simply not the same as it was a year ago, no matter how much we wish it were.

Date (Dublin Core)

November 2, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Andrew Hogan

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Andrew Hogan

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

Photograph of me just outside of my classroom.

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Education--K12

English Emotion

English Technology

English Clothing & Accessories

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

sensory history

teacher

work from home

middle school

cold

remote work

sweatshirt

isolation

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Sensory History

Sensory-History

School

Sensory

Cold

Education

Collection (Dublin Core)

K-12

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history submissions and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

01/15/2021

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

03/23/2021

06/27/2023

Item sets

Covid 19

This item was submitted on January 15, 2021 by Andrew Hogan using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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