Heating Up: Harnessing Social Media to Address Extreme Conditions in the Classroom
Living in California the biggest benefit and detriment of the state is the weather. Some days are perfect and a balmy 73° while others are sweltering 90°+ in the shade. While working within LAUSD as a high school staff, the biggest complaint I would get from students during these dry days was the inability to focus due to the high temperatures.
Left too long in hot classrooms is not only a health hazard for students and staff, but hotter temperatures can also lead to higher incidences of behavioral issues. According to Arianna Prothero in her article What Educators Need to Know about Schools and Hot Weather at Edweek.org, “Heat also affects students’ behavior, according to another study, which found that extreme temperatures increase school absences and disciplinary referrals” (Prothero, 2023). These issues were on full display during these hot-flash days; students ditching, more fights, students leaving campus, and defiance of staff and admin.
In a pinch, the admin could round up the affected classrooms and have them complete work within an air-conditioned auditorium but, the time it took to round up the students, pass the information, have work for the students to do, and do it all, the period had passed. Admin was always left looking like they didn’t care about the students when they just couldn’t coordinate fast enough.
One way I found helpful to curtail these behaviors and give ample warning was to notify students and staff through school channels (in my case blackboard and schoology) early in the morning, before school on a day that is forecasted to be very hot. Once the students and staff knew about the possibility of AC failure, the admin notified grounds workers to prepare the auditorium for student’s use in case this happened. By providing an early warning and reminder system through social media channels, admin were able to move students from faulty classrooms quickly, avoiding lost instruction time, and putting all available resources to use, all thanks to a simple heads-up communication on social media.
More so, students were incentivized to stay in their classrooms instead of roaming around. The main complaint of the wandering students was that they were too hot, so they went out of their classrooms to look for fresher areas. These journeys would disrupt other classrooms, entice other students to walk around if they saw their friends out and about, and generally create a hazardous environment due to the high number of students walking around unattended. Using social media communications to tell the students where to go in case of an A/C failure meant that fewer students were roaming around, fewer classrooms were being disrupted, and fewer disciplinary issues were had. The result of this simple social media communication to convey information to both students and staff led to a 60% reduction in fights during the same period, compared to the year before, and a 20% increase in instruction time due to less time wasted trying to cool down a hot classroom (15 fights 2021 v. 6 fights 2022) (an average of 12 min./ period saved when staff knew where to go when A/C when out compared to an average wait time of 15 min./period to get a fan from plant manager storage to an affected classroom, 2021 v. 2022).
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