The Lights are On, but…

As I approach my classroom, I glance down at the crack between the door and the floor. “Wait – is it dark?” It’s Monday of the third week of school. I shouldn’t get my hopes up, and yet I can’t help it. I call out to my colleague, who trails behind me, somewhat less obsessed. “I think it’s dark!”

As I get closer, reality sets in, “Nope. It’s still light.” My shoulders slump and my pace slows. The lights are still on – exactly as they have been 24 hours a day since some time during the week before school started. I sigh, “Guess it’s another day without the projector.” Her laugh is somewhere between commiseration and desperation. We turn into the stairwell – where the lights automatically flicker on – and make our way to our permanently lit office.

Over the summer, most of the lights in our school were replaced. This was a much-needed renovation: most of the old fluorescent fixtures – the kind with the long bulbs and the plastic covers – had long since lost their coverings. Last year, students in one of my classes managed to accidentally shatter one of the bulbs, and the fixtures were, in general, well past the end of their useful life. We welcomed the idea of new lights.

We should have known better. 

We found out on the last day of the school year that we needed to empty our classrooms before the electrical work started. If we didn’t, we were warned, the construction crews would “try” their best to get things back in the right places, but they made no guarantee. Since it was the very last day we were allowed in the building, and since both time and boxes were in extremely short supply, most of us threw our hands up and left. I figured I could come in the week before school started and get things sorted. This did not happen.

In our school board this year, both teachers and students started on the Tuesday after Labour Day. There were no PD days, no time to meet or plan or – crucially – set up our rooms after the summer’s chaos. And chaos it was. Teachers weren’t allowed into our building until the Friday before the long weekend. (Well, that’s not quite fair: on Wednesday we learned that if we had classrooms on the first floor, we could get in on Thursday afternoon.) I went in all day on Friday, but I had to help new teachers (who were not officially employed until Tuesday) find their way around the school – all while trying to figure out why I had a heat lamp of sorts while I was missing most of the student chairs from the classroom. And then there was the question of what had happened to the teacher desks from the English office; they had migrated into the Business office, where they huddled into a corner, hiding. I worked all day, and didn’t come close to being ready. I noticed that we didn’t have light switches – heck, I even laughed about it – but I was so busy that I didn’t quite register what it would mean to have super-bright LED lights on all day every day.

On Labour Day, while others enjoyed a day off, I cajoled Mr. 17 and his friends into the school building to help haul things around. Desks were moved; chairs were located; books were carted from one room to another and, after several hours of sweaty work, the office, the classroom and the book room were functional, if not organized. The teens commented on the brightness of the lights and asked how I would manage without being able to turn them off, but I was mostly focused on making sure that students would have a place to sit on Tuesday.

School started. The lights were on. By the end of the first day, my eyes were tired, but then I was generally tired because it was the first day, so I ignored it. By the end of the second day, my eyes were dry. By the end of the week, I was a little headachy. Imagine: every room has lights on at full brightness ALL THE TIME. There is no respite. I have tried to use the projector to, you know, teach, but the lights are so bright that students can really only see text. No images. No video clips. No nothing. Mostly, I try not to use it because it’s not worth the hassle – or the extra light from the bulb.

The rest of North American schools are trying to figure out how to deal with AI in the classroom. Me? I just want to turn off the lights.

Last week, a few upstairs classrooms got light switches. Today, as we left school, electricians were in our office. They had removed some of the ceiling tiles and were fiddling with wires. I didn’t dare ask – because I didn’t want to jinx it – but I’d swear they might have been installing a light switch. It’s not as good as having a light switch in my actual classroom, but I’ll take dimmed lights in the office if it’s all I can get. Maybe I can go in before school and sit, blissfully, in the dark for a few minutes. Rumour has it that the whole school will have light switches installed “in the next few weeks.” Until then, the lights are on.