Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful

As a PE teacher we have certain policies of when the students don't participate outside. These include any day that the weather is projected to be over 100 degrees, a Spare the Air Day and rain (rain that gets the entire ground wet). We have no rule about being too cold or too foggy. All of the PE teachers in my department make announcements all the time to our students to have them bring the proper cold weather clothing because they will dress for PE even in cold weather. There are always several who are not prepared when it turns cold and are not too pleased with our choice to continue PE outside. Then we always have a few in each class who are the one's we call "will always wear their short and t-shirt uniform everyday no matter the conditions outside".

The school that I teach at really does not have adequate inside facilities to take some 200+ PE students at one time. There is a gym but it is quite small and the students really lose all self control when we are in there. There is only so much sit down volleyball and tug of war that we as teachers can handle. There is a theater for us to use and be very comfortable but there is always the issue if another teacher (especially the Drama teacher) is using it for something for their students. Another issue of going inside is if we show a sports movie but they have to nothing more than PG and at that it is a stretch sometimes if a movie is not appropriate for young viewers. If we decide to do a lesson it is extremely large scale. Throughout the day between all of the PE classes with all 5 of the teachers we are teaching over 1,000 students. If you have a handout then you are making over 1,000 copies, usually front and back. So most of my co-workers have the same view point as myself, "any day outside is better than a day inside".

The last couple of weeks the weather outside has been quite frightful, if I could say that. Two weeks before vacation, we were socked in with Tully fog. I posted on that. There were even some days that there was fog and frost at the same time. This is a really rare occurrence for the Bay Area. The week prior to vacation was even more frightful. Monday it was raining out and the theater was available because the Drama teacher was out ill. We made the sub stay in the drama classroom. The rest of the week we were outside. Tuesday it was freezing cold, literally freezing cold and threatening rain/sleet/snow all day. The Weather Channel reported the city in which I work at 39 with a dew point of 35 and this did not include the wind chill factor. I don't think out West the weather reports include a wind chill factor, or at least I don't hear about it in California. The near by hills and mountains had snow all over them. I personally almost froze out there that day. Wednesday it was clear but still very cold but was better only because the sun was shining. Thursday was cold like Wednesday but the threat of rain had returned.

Thursday during one of my classes one of my students said, not sure if it was said to anyone but I heard him, "Oh the weather outside is frightful" (he was singing that line to Let it Snow, Let it Snow). He is one of my students sitting there unprepared with his legs and arms wrapped up into his t-shirt sitting in a big blog on the ground. I walked by him and chuckled and told him he was very creative.