The Day My AC Died

I don't ask for a lot. I consider myself to be a fairly low key, go with the flow kind of guy. I try to make the best of most situations and keep a positive attitude. It honestly just makes life easier and much more pleasant. Right? Ok well with that said, a week before school started, as I was preparing my classroom, I noticed that it was hotter in my classroom than it was outside. This is difficult to accomplish in August in Mississippi. After making some inquiries, I found that my air conditioning unit was indeed broken. It took about a week, but finally we got the ol' girl back in good running order, and my classroom wasn't exactly cool, but it was cooler than it was outside.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I arrived in my classroom to find that it was again, much warmer in there than it was outside. I informed the necessary parties of the situation, and thought, "it'll be fine, we'll be able to tough it out together". Not true. That was a bad, bad thought. What resulted was several days of the most frustrating instruction to date. I couldn't get through three sentences without a loud exhale, paired with a conversation that went something like this:

"man it hot up in here Coach Ware, I'm about to fall out".

"Take it easy Denarius, you're just gonna have to be tough, I promise there's nothing I can do"

"Man Coach, my momma's gonna be mad when I fall out up in yo class".

"I know, Denarius, I know".

I literally wrote, "Please do not comment on the temperature of this classroom" on the board, but to no avail. It is amazing how ornery kids get when they are hot. They transform from relatively mild mannered teenagers, to mouthy and unreasonable. Ultimately I can only blame them so much. They are being held in a place they already didn't like, but are now hot while they are doing it. I tried to explain the basic principle that the more they complained about it, literally the more hot air was being expelled, and the hotter the room would get. They didn't like that either. I mean, I don't love being hot. I am more irritable, I'll admit it, but there's only so much one can do. What resulted from this debacle was several days of moving around various classrooms while the teachers were on their planning period. I was forced to hand out notes instead of my normal powerpoint presentations, but it was worth it, because Denarius wasn't hot.