Day 137 (of 186) power outages
Always fun to start the day with a power surge – the sense of panic and common question: does that mean school is cancelled? Usually not – unless there is an issue that makes water an issue because then bathrooms become an issue. My personal favourite was at one of my schools that had a big problem because we had shutters on our windows and that made the school DARK. The only space we could have with some light was the gym with open exit doors (still not really a lot of light). It was a bit of a tough start but we were assured that the power would be on soon…..and it was!
My other favourite was when the power company told us that due to a lightning strike there wouldn’t be any power until that evening…maybe not until the next morning because it was bad. So we made emergency arrangements to get kids home (or to a friends house that parents supported). As you might guess as the last bus pulled away…..the power was restored. A good reminder that the best laid plans o mice and men…well, at least until there is a paradigm shifting change in battery design and creation –
Also, being a tech driven teacher I like to share when a colleague teases “gonna be tricky day for you” that with mobile devices, there was a time that a school I was in had a blackout and we didn’t know until the principal came to check how we were doing with it – only to see that thanks to a UPS (uninterrupted power supply/backup battery) our computers were still working thanks to their battery’s and able to keep connecting to wifi because I had set up some redundancies to keep power flowing. So the only class not to notice the power outage was the class using the tech.
Mind you I’m now at a school with a desktop lab, so we are more impacted by power loss – but some iPads have been ordered and are on their way so we will be less reliant on the three prong plugs (aka anchors). And I’m still leery of some worries – after all, my pencil isn’t the only peripheral that sometimes needs a charge….
But I do love the thinkings and questions by students when the power is off:
- maybe it’s because we talked about brown-ourts yesterday (unless Siri and Alexa are listening……)
- maybe we should do an outdoor learning day (I support this idea!)
- will there still be ______ ? (yes – the things we need tech to do can wait until we have the power back to do it – and we have a variety of options in the meantime – including a tech takeapart station opening on T(ec)hursday that we could start on earlier)
- what if the power never comes back? (too many books and movies that are dystopian in nature – not a bad thing!)
- what if the lights are off in the bathroom (good thing we have some devices with lights on them!)
- do we get to go home? Yes – when the final bell rings….!
Sometimes power outages are opportunities…..
