If you care to read my entry for 16 February, you will see I\u2019m trapped in a kind of sinister loop. <\/p>\n
Then I complained bitterly about the appalling conditions of classroom 302 in our Facultat, a room which is beginning to remind me of Stephen King\u2019s 1408 and other mythical Gothic rooms. After being called names, such as \u2018selfish,\u2019 my students and I were moved last semester to a much better classroom. 302 has been revamped in the meantime but not really that much: still no platform, same whiteboard, no air conditioning… at least the eraser was not placed this time on a plate. By the way, I have a projector but no computer equipment (I\u2019m supposed to bring my own, self-financed laptop). We have two tiny windows, a blind is broken and temperatures inside the classroom were yesterday at 15:00 in the afternoon above 30\u00ba (that\u2019s 86\u00ba Fahrenheit). I\u2019ve asked my very sweaty 50 odd students to bring in a thermometer next day to check if they\u2019re actually closer to 35\u00ba.<\/p>\n
An optimistic colleague who always looks on the bright side of life, tells me I should be happy that I\u2019m getting sauna for free as I teach. Well, I know I\u2019m supposed to earn a living with the sweat of my brow, but this is too literal! I thought of bringing an electric fan to class (instead of the computer…) but I finally brought just a hand fan, feeling it would be disloyal to keep fresh as my students fainted. Sooner or later one of them will indeed faint and then we\u2019ll see what happens. You might say that all this is because temperatures are still unusually high for this end of summer but, then, if they\u2019re too high for basic human breathing in class maybe the beginning of the course should have been delayed. Or a new air conditioning unit found urgently. Try giving an introduction to Victorian Literature in this heat… I can at least walk up and down the classroom, searching for whiffs of fresh air but my poor students are stuck in seating rows, unable to shift their chairs for more breathing space. They sigh, fan themselves with the paper they should be using to make notes, look wistfully at the out-or-order air-conditioning unit and unglue their t-shirts from their chests every two minutes, look at their watches and hoping this original form of torture is soon over.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, temperatures will soon start going down, as, traditionally, Mediterranean Catalonia is drenched by hard rains at the beginning of Autumn. I haven\u2019t asked this time for a transfer to another classroom, for reasons that are too long to explain (and perhaps a bit of masochism). Yet, I\u2019ve drawn the line at bringing my own computer or begging on my knees for one of the only 5 laptops the Facultat possesses for the staff in 11 Departments. The consequence? I\u2019m back to basics: I\u2019ll teach Victorian Literature this time with no film clips, no PowerPoint, no internet… just as I was taught \u2013 by reading and talking about what we read. It might even be an innovation.<\/p>\n
I just forgot to say I work on a European \u2018Campus d\u2019Excel\u2022l\u00e8ncia Internacional\u2019 (Outstanding International Campus).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you care to read my entry for 16 February, you will see I\u2019m trapped in a kind of sinister loop. Then I complained bitterly about the appalling conditions of classroom 302 in our Facultat, a room which is beginning to remind me of Stephen King\u2019s 1408 and other mythical Gothic rooms. After being called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tools-and-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}