With interactive Smart Boards in classrooms requiring electricity and an increasing number of students using battery-powered tablets that they may have not remembered to charge, school buildings throughout the northwest suburbs are becoming more dependent on reliable power supplies.
So, when a school district is faced with a brief power outage following strong springtime winds — as was the case at Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 earlier this March — teachers and administrators find ways to carry out lesson plans, even ones involving technological devices, by adapting and relying on more traditional teaching methods, said District 103 Superintendent Scott Warren.
“I think there’s a misnomer out there that all teachers do is spend time on the internet all day long,” Warren said. “Technology is a tool.”
Aside from District 103, officials at Aptakisic-Tripp School District 102 in Buffalo Grove experienced a brief outage in March, knocking out power in classrooms for a few hours, following a snowstorm, a spokesperson said.
Numerous school officials from the Buffalo Grove and Lincolnshire areas said teachers simply continue with their job when classrooms are experiencing power outages, although it may create an inconvenience for everyone involved.
Teachers sometimes will delay a tech-heavy lesson or project a day or two when problems with electricity develop and instead, will focus on a less tech-intensify lesson, officials said.
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“It’s not about the tool. It’s about the concept,” said Gerri Songer, a teacher and president of the teacher’s union at Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214.
At Kildeer Countryside School District 96’s Woodlawn Middle School in Long Grove, principal Greg Grana said that teachers also still can carry out lesson plans involving tablets while classrooms are dark, as long as students’ devices are charged.
Teachers can wirlessly share files and assignments and have students work on those assignments through certain application on their tablets, Grana said.
“It would be harder for them to function without technology over not having lights,” Grana said. “Student iPads are lit and would function fine in a completely dark room. The key for us is that technology is still the tool, whereas good teaching will always be our constant.”
But at Stevenson High School, officials already have safeguards in place in the event of a major power outage. The school has managed its own back-up power station for more than a decade.
Rodney Phelps, director of facilities at Stevenson High School, said the school operates three, 825-watt generators that are fueled by natural gas and could keep the power on at Stevenson as long as four days.
“We use it not only in the rare case of a power outage, but also to save money by turning it on when it’s cheaper than buying electricity from Commonwealth Edison,” Stevenson spokesman Jim Conrey said.
At District 96’s Willow Grove Early Learning Center in Buffalo Grove, principal Jennifer Smith said she has navigated several power outages during her time as an educator.
She has found that teachers seem unfazed when those incidents do happen.
“I love technology and value the contributions it’s made to the field,” Smith said. “But if it all went away, our teachers would keep going.”
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