Cons:
My portable has a very old porch and wheelchair ramp. There is a kind of dip in the deck in front of the doors, probably the result of more years of use than the structure was originally intended for, that collects water. On cold mornings, this thin sheet of moisture becomes a skating rink which makes the ramp an adventure. Later in the day, it settles into a small pond.
If it rains very hard, the small pond slowly leaks under my door, saturating the carpet all the way over to the foot of my desk. I shudder to think of the dry rot going on under there.
There is no overhang of roof to cover the porch. Kids wanting to be on time to class must stand out in the rain until I race to my classroom after early-morning meetings that invariably run right up until 8 o'clock. Kids wanting to stay dry wait in the hallway by the back of the gym, only racing the thirty or so yards to my door at the four-minute bell, or when they see the whites of my eyes. On rainy days, I rarely keep track of tardies.
My door is off-kilter. Probably again the result of the overuse of a TEMPORARY structure. It neither closes nor opens without the considerable application of force.
The main power switch to the structure is on the OUTSIDE of the north wall. There is a large handle that can be easily pulled down to rob us of power. Local jokesters have identified this bright red handle and enjoy pulling it periodically, particularly, it appears, over weekends when I have a large amount of paperwork to catch up on. I can reach it if I bring a chair outside. (I have to smile thinking about a tower of sixth-graders on each others' shoulders, working so hard to inconvenience me.)
We trip power fuses frequently, and have had to rearrange computers, printers, lights and portable heaters several times in order to balance the drain of power between the three fuses. Once again, the tripping generally occurs at very opportune moments--like after writing an IEP but just seconds before the mouse icon gets to the SAVE button.
We have ants. They have spent weeks trotting in long lines across our desks, from the windows and up and down the walls...doubtless through the cracks created by years of use and the unchecked dry rot that occurs after the rooms flood. The district pest control folks only come out when the ants are sleeping in, and they won't do anything about them unless they actually see the buggers out and about. Our building janitor cannot spray because it's toxic to a learning environment. I have to brush them away in order to work at my computer.
Our building has four-minute passing periods. It takes ME about four and a half minutes to walk, in long quick strides, from my door to the resource room on the other end of the building--and this is BEFORE school, when I don't have to navigate around and through seven hundred students, and then only if I don't have to stop at the bathroom. I only count kids tardy when I can't see them racing for my door after the bell has rung, and if they have to go to the bathroom five minutes into class, I have a hard time telling them to wait until I'm done directly instructing. It's difficult to teach with all that wiggling going on, anyway.
Pros:
Visiting district bigwigs apparently don't fancy walking that far just to wait, standing in a puddle in the rain, while I try to open my door for them.
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2 comments:
Mom said that the architect of your current school building was not too good. This, I think, is another example of the incompetence of that person. It is a known fact that all schools at some time or other will need temporary classrooms. Any architect worth the name would've designed an area for just such an event. Well I hope that most new schools are now being set up that way...what I mean is power, a covered walkway and surface preparation should be in place as part of the original design of the school.
In other H&S observations...if there is dry-rot, mold or bugs, the facility is in violation of WAC 296-800. The school facility supervisors should be on the look out for hazardous working conditions. Even a slippery entry way should be corrected with a mat or other engineering fixes. Your portable may be non-compliant!
A few thoughts/ideas/suggestions from your engineer brother-in-law.
1. Depending on how the door landing is currently designed, it may be possible to "supplement" it with a surface that compensates for the dip and sheds the pooling water. That could also act to prevent the flooding problem into the classroom. It may even be fairly easy and cheap to do this.
2. There are usually two reasons a door sticks. The first is that a hinge is loose, which is not too difficult to fix. The second is that the whole frame is toqued out of shape, with is less common though not impossible. But either way, some "adjustment" might relieve that problem, if not necessarily make it go away.
3. Depending on how many people might be waiting, it might be worth acquiring a supply of distinctive (and inexpensive) umbrellas that one can set out on rainy days. That way, kids waiting on you have something available to keep the water off without the stress of a daily sprint to the door (which may be dangerous, as well as annoying and inconvenient). If the umbrellas were in some container that was easily moved, were not particularly small (cheap ones often are not), and perhaps were not of a stylish color or appearance, I guess you probably would not see too many of them stolen. The City of Redmond uses this sort of practice.
4. Probably not a lot that can be done about the power switch, since I imagine it needs to remain visible and your jokers already know about it anyway (which means covering it is not necessarily an option anymore).
5. Sounds like you probably have already resolved the power distribution issues, for the most part.
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