Not having heat or electricity was an interesting kind of challenge for schools when I was growing up. It meant that the Fall semester ended sometime in late November and Spring semester did not begin until late February or early March. The rest of the time the students were given assignments to do at home: I remember my parents would go in weekly to exchange my completed assignments for the graded ones returned by the teachers. Occasionally, during the notebook dropoff the school would give out powdered milk allocations for each student. This was always a welcome treat – I didn’t particularly like milk, but the powder was sweet, and I’d just eat it as is to satisfy my sweet tooth.
Kerosene stoves were standard-issue classroom equipment, with the pipe going through the room and right out the window. Sometimes they would burp smoke into the classroom, which wasn’t great, but still better than trying to hold a pen with half-frozen fingers (back then mild frostbite was another thing that came standard-issue – pretty much all my classmates, including myself, would get it at some point or another). Classes ran short, only 25 minutes at a time, to prevent us from having to sit in the cold for too long. Teachers would tell us to go run around during the 5 minute breaks between classes to help keep us warm. Back in the classroom, coats, gloves, and hats never came off. We would pull our long benches around the stove and huddle together, rubbing our hands and occasionally stomping our feet to ward off frostbite the best we could.
The teachers were not getting paid. At one point they were owed more than a year’s worth of salary. They made ends meet (or didn’t) however they could. Some were fortunate enough to have family members with gainful employment, others taught private lessons or moonlighted at other jobs. One of my teachers was letting out one of her two bedrooms while she, her husband, her mother-in-law, and her adult daughter all lived in the other bedroom. Folks were figuring out how to do without. But they still showed up, still taught, still cared about the students, still assigned and graded homeworks. This was life as we knew it.
Continue reading “Pack… Winter Gloves”
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