On Feb. 17, Hamilton Yankees were hit by a power outage due to the recent construction, which affected classrooms across the campus and put students behind on their daily curriculums. The most affected by this power outage were the two main buildings of the school, Lab and Brown, leading to students and teachers having to resort to a completely different way of teaching, using the traditional pen and paper to complete scheduled work.
While some staff expressed their distaste over the return of an old-fashioned way of schooling, some had a positive outlook on it. Principal Baxter expressed her overall concern of the school’s severe power outage, however said she deeply appreciated to see instruction continue despite the problem, stating, “It was uplifting to see teachers plan without any power and resort back to old school ways of teaching.”
In terms of communication, both students and teachers were left in the dark about the power outage. “I showed up and I found out,” said Ms. Kleinmaier, an AP environmental science teacher. “I would’ve loved to know ahead of time if we were going to have Wi-Fi and power outage issues. It is hard to teach 21st century skills when you don’t have 21st century technology.”
Many students found it hard to navigate school with the power being out and there being no wifi. AMPA junior Harlem DeAngelis expressed that the power outage had a big impact on him and his classmates’ productivity in classes.
“Most of my classes had no resources so we didn’t end up doing anything. I noticed a lot of kids were skipping classes and running around the halls, it was very chaotic.” Overall, he noticed unruly behavior from other students since they seemed to get out of control due to the chaos.
Other students noticed that there wasn’t much of a difference from a regular school schedule. Humanities junior Nico Navarrete didn’t notice a change, stating “Some teachers still gave us paper assignments, and some other teachers just said, okay, well, this is just a time for you guys to work on assignments that I already gave you on paper. So, nothing different.”
Towards the end of the school day, school officials figured out another way to continue instruction. A generator was placed to provide electricity across the campus to give wifi and light to classrooms affected by the outage.
Mayte Hernandez-Sernas and Nancy Paredes contributed reporting to this article.
