window

in my classroom there are four very tall windows facing northeastish. there is a top windowpane and bottom windowpane in each window, for a total of eight panes, all capable of opening separately. each of the windowpanes is fitted with a tic-tac-toe grid of metal on the outside to make it look like nine smaller panes of glass. a decorative touch. due to eight mysterious and separate circumstances (according to the folks who fix things in our building), not a single window opens. because there are two window unit air conditioners in my classroom, this is more a moral issue than a comfort issue. it bothers me to run the a/c in january because nobody knows how to regulate the heat and we can't get a window open and the children are melting. for kicks, every week or so i send down a memo asking for help, asking for just one window that opens. if i pass by an administrator in the hallway, i try to work it into friendly conversation. you can imagine how my popularity has soared in the office as a result of that. lately, i have given up. only two more weeks in that room, four more weeks in the building, then nothing i can do until september.

but today a group of middle school kids put together "day without electricity" as a way to bring awareness about electricity use and eco issues to the school. teachers could sign a pledge saying their class would forgo electricity for the whole day and i can't stand to miss an opportunity to sign my name to stuff like this. so i signed up. then i thought about what it would mean. then i told the kids. they were not so pleased about the whole no air conditioner thing, considering we're in there with no openable windows. so today when i showed up i asked the sponsoring teacher about having the a/c on fan because of the windows and she thought that was fair, and in keeping with the spirit of the day. when i got up to class, though, the cold and rainy outside had somehow seeped into the classroom. it was almost comfy. i left the machine off and instead opened the window shades to let in the few puny streaks of light shoving through a mess of clouds.

the kids came in. they sat. they took a quiz, then read. we talked about the characters in the story we're reading, the characters in the stories we're writing and characters in general. at one point, nearly two hours into the first class, i was listening to a child tell what he thought about a character's choice and i was gazing mindlessly at the window behind him as i listened. there was something strange about the window. something new. so i walked over there after we finished talking about this choice, how it was a painful choice, but one the character made because she loved her children. i pointed to the window and asked if the children noticed what i'd noticed. they noticed quickly. the tic-tac-toe of metal molding on the outside had come loose in places and someone had attempted to fix it. with scotch tape. on the outside. rather poorly. and i asked the children about the likelihood of someone scaling the four stories outside to do this bang up job with the scotch tape versus the likelihood of someone opening the window to do it. the kids were pretty sure someone with brainpower to use scotch tape to affix metal to glass on the outside of a four story building did not likely have the skill to climb up the outside of said building, even if he or she found a four story ladder nearby.

we all smiled at once. i tried the window myself. now, i'm actually pretty strong but these windows are a two person job, so the other teacher in the room lifted on one side and one of the children, frantically excited at the possibility of fresh air for the first time in a year, lifted on the other. the window went up. the rush of air from the outside had a texture that's indescribable. the smell and taste of it hit all the children at once. they began to get giddy. the window opening duo went to the second window and easily lifted it. the windows at either end were crammed full of air conditioners on the lower half, rendering the top halves useless, as well. but those two windows in the middle, the ones that were open there on the bottom panes, might just be openable on top as well. i grabbed the window pole, a ten foot wooden staff with a brass hook on the end i've mostly used for jousting with students this year, and hooked it into the first top latch. the new air swirled and danced around the room. when we had the second top window open, we didn't know what to do. we were so satisfied with ourselves we just sat back.

but the other teacher found one of the metal molding pieces on the ledge outside, waiting to fall and impale the skull of some random child the sidewalk. one end was daggerlike and the other was still wrapped in a piece of the shockingly ineffective scotch tape that was struggling to hold up other pieces. and our joy found a dark edge. how long had these windows been like this? not more than a week, but why had nobody said anything? i'd asked as recently as two days ago about the possibility of fixing them, only to be met with a laugh. and the kids know because regularly the ask about the windows. so they got mean looks. angry looks. because what you don't want to do to teenagers is corral a bunch of them in one place and lie to them about something, even somethings small. and although this was small, the ugliness of the behavior of others, an ugliness that has now stretched over ten months, actually disgusted them. we grumbled a bit about how people treated us, about what we would say or should say to which administrator. the kids are, as you might remember from previous posts, rather unimpressed with the men who maintain the building here. there is a sense that we might be at war with them. the sense is that we might be winning this hazy, ill-defined war if they weren't somehow cheating.

but then this incredible breeze blew in, new to us because it's a fourth floor breeze, clean and free of car exhaust and food smells, a breeze full of rain and greenness, smelling just like sky, so we all just sat back in our seats and let it fall all around us.