The skinny on (classroom) climate change

The idea that it’s harder to focus when it’s too cold isn’t childish nonsense.

Originally published in the Moultrie News.

My son says his classroom is too cold! This makes it difficult for him to focus on the lessons. What can I do to help fix this problem?

Have you tried a sweater?

I’m being facetious, but only barely. The fact is there’s apparently not much anyone but God himself can do to control the climate in a classroom. In the districts I know about, the temperature is under the secret, unyielding control of unseen bureaucrats, a cabal my teachers used to mysteriously refer to as “the Airluminati.”

I expect it’s like that in most districts, but maybe not. If your district allows teachers to control their own thermostats, just have your child politely ask to make it warmer. Failing that, perhaps he could get a polite petition going; if he’s freezing his pencil pouch off, probably other students are, too.

I warn you, though: it might not work. If I controlled the temperature in my classroom (and for three gloriously tropical years I did), the climate would be calibrated to one person: me. (Silver lining: going from icicles to sweat beads might be considered an improvement for kids like your son.)

I do apologize if that sounds (ahem) cold, but most teachers probably feel the same way. While we do care about their comfort, our students are only passing through. Teachers gotta live there. And, in my neighborhood at least, it was always a time-honored tradition that the hand that pays the bills is the hand that controls the thermostat. In a classroom, that’s the teacher, who pays “rent” in a myriad of ways students don’t.

Room temperature is a common complaint among teachers, for good reason. It’s hard enough to teach under ideal circumstances. Doing it while wearing a parka in the middle of September only increases the challenge. Hence, teachers’ lounges are full of legends about educators “tricking” their thermostats into warmer air using ice packs, soda cans, frozen peas, and even ice cream (what would you do with a Klondike Bar?). In hot rooms, sun lamps and microwaved Lean Cuisines have allegedly done the trick.

The obvious solution would be to give teachers control over the classroom environment. It feels punitive to pay us so little and then make us labor in an igloo or sauna. The other side of that, I presume, is that teachers slamming it down to 60 in August would cost districts a lot of money.

By the way, the idea that it’s harder to focus when it’s too cold isn’t childish nonsense. Multiple scientific studies show that kids perform more poorly when classroom temperatures are too high or too low. The studies even pinpoint the temps needed for optimal performance: between 68 and 74°F.

To me, there’s your solution: allow teachers to control their classrooms within those temperatures. It wouldn’t cost much money and would make teachers very happy — and a happy teacher is an employed teacher (have I mentioned there’s a teacher shortage?). Many teachers might even adjust the climate to suit student comfort.

Or maybe not, which is why the bottom line was also the first one: Have you tried a sweater? Remind your child that life is full of uncomfortable environments, and even if it were possible for teachers to control the climate, it would be impossible to do it to the satisfaction of thirty children. So pack a pullover or do as I did in school: pull your arms inside your t-shirt and shiver through the year doing the best you can with what you have.

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Jody Stallings has been an award-winning teacher in Charleston since 1992 and is director of the Charleston Teacher Alliance. To submit a question, order his books, or follow him on social media, please visit JodyStallings.com.