“Are they going to buy us a ceiling fan with water jets? It would be the best.” At 9 years old, Eduardo Calderón, student of the Torre Ramona school de Zaragoza is very clear about the solution to combat the 31.1º C that the thermometer marks in his classroom, the 3º B primary school, at 12:36. Throughout the morning she has gone to refill his water bottle at the sink “at least five times” and “I took the opportunity to wet my head“, he explains. At recess, from 11:10 a.m. to 11:40 a.m. these days that end at 1:00 p.m., he has dedicated himself to “going to the fountain every two times three.” And luckily they have them in the courtyard.
The group of schoolchildren are learning to knit with three older women from the Salvador Allende adult center who teach them how to handle needles. In return, the children read aloud to them some passages from ‘The Little Prince’. Its about ‘Weaving ties’ programwhich the center organizes in collaboration with the Ricardo Magdalena library.
An activity that brings generations closer and they love it. It seems that it is not difficult for them to pay attention, but nothing to do with the subjects of Mathematics and English at the beginning of the day. It is also true that at this point the final notes are practically set.
“They have a harder time concentrating, the attention they pay in this heat is not the same and they feel tired. Some even complain of a headache”
“It’s harder for them to concentrate, the attention they pay in this heat is not the same and they feel tired. Some even complain of a headache, but these days we can’t ask them to be one hundred percent either,” says Marina Hernández, the tutor. She has brought a small fan from home for her table, while she walks between the desks she takes the opportunity to fan them and is “much more flexible” to let them go to the bathrooms. From one of these outlets Roxny Arauz, 9 years old, returns with her shirt completely soaked. “She was sweating, what I would do is a water fight with balloons,” she proposes. Next to her, Binton Gekeneh, says that she constantly wets her face and arms, but that she knows that in the dining room it will be cooler “because there is a fan on the ceiling and my table is right below it”.
Green and insulating covers
This school in the Zaragoza neighborhood of Las Fuentes, with 400 students and two lanes, is an example of the buildings built before there was a basic regulation of thermal thermal conditions and it is not prepared. When one enters the facilities at noon, the temperature is pleasant in the corridors on the ground floor. But as you go up the stairs and reach the first and second floors, the suffocation increases. The classrooms of the older ones, oriented to the southeast, and in which the sun shines from early in the morning, are a real oven A while ago. Marisa Igea, a 3rd grade tutor, has been wielding a water vaporizer since Monday with which she sprays the schoolchildren. “It’s the best way I’ve found to withstand the heat, for them I’d be getting them wet all the time,” she says.
“All public buildings have air conditioning except educational centers”, recalls José Luis Ruiz, head of studies. It does not require air conditioning that is “not very ecological and very expensive”, but it does require measures to be taken in the short and medium term to adapt these facilities. “It can range from placing green roofs to installing awnings that shade the windows -he comments-, in addition to improving the current insulation that is not efficient.”
Badminton and “static” tennis
Physical Education is one of the subjects that has adapted to these extreme temperatures. Mari Carmen Lorén, the teacher who teaches it, says that they have been practicing badminton and “static” tennis for a few days based on throws and other exercises such as “espadrille shooting and group rope, so that they have time to recover after jumping “.
“You have to do things with little physical activity because body heat is very high. Sometimes I take their pulse and tell them that as soon as they feel a bit overwhelmed, stop and soak. I have to stop the very agitated children so they don’t run,” he says. The sessions are held in the gym and in the shade of the patio thanks to a few trees and the porches. Next week he will notify families so that they come with sandals and t-shirts that can be soaked. They will play water games. Something more directed than those that are already disputed at recess time, a time in which they use the watering cans of the orchard and among the older ones the balloons. This is the ‘School of heat’.
