Extreme Heat Is Making Learning—And Teaching—More Difficult

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: This is Science Friday. I’m Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist. I’m filling in for Ira this week. Later in the hour, a neuroscientist investigates what we know about cow intelligence and how scientists can learn about really ancient history by looking at rocks.

Up first, kids across the US just kicked off a new school year, but the summer heat is still here. In recent years, temperatures have stayed hotter than normal through September and even into October. And sitting in a sweltering classroom can make learning really difficult, even dangerous.

A story in The 19th describes how learning and teaching have become more challenging as the planet heats up and what solutions might be on the horizon. Joining me is Jessica Kutz, reporter at The 19th based in Tucson, Arizona. Welcome to Science Friday.

JESSICA KUTZ: Thanks so much, Sophie.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Jessica, why are kids specifically so at risk for heat exhaustion or dehydration?

JESSICA KUTZ: Yeah, so kids are so at risk because their bodies are still developing the ability to thermoregulate. And what that means is that our bodies have this ability to either heat up or warm up when it’s too cold or to cool down when it’s too hot outside. But for kids, their main ability and our main ability to thermoregulate in the heat is the function of sweating.

But kids don’t sweat as much as adults. And that’s really important because when we sweat, that evaporates off of our skin, and it cools us down. It’s kind of one of our main mechanisms in the heat. And so for kids, also for people who are pregnant and also the elderly, that ability is somewhat compromised.

I would say the other thing is that kids, they also just haven’t learned the cues of their own bodies yet. So they don’t always know when they’re overheating, or they forget to drink water when they should be drinking water. And so they really depend on adults, like parents and teachers, to remind them to do these sorts of things to stay safe.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: And some schools can just run the AC during hot weather, but many don’t have air conditioning, right?

JESSICA KUTZ: That’s right. So as you mentioned, heat is extending further into the school year, but it’s also starting earlier into the spring. So this used to not be a problem because in places like the East Coast, where there really isn’t air conditioning in a lot of these schools, because they were built in the ’50s and the ’60s, they didn’t have to think about having cooling because kids were already out of schools in the summer when it started to get hotter.

But because this heat season is extending, we have a lot of students that are in these classrooms that don’t have any air conditioning. And in contrast, where I live in Tucson and Arizona in general, it’s always been pretty hot here, and so schools have already adapted to the hot weather. But a lot of parts of the country don’t have that infrastructure yet.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Roughly, how many schools would you say don’t have AC in the country?

JESSICA KUTZ: So the latest estimate shows that over 36,000 schools nationwide don’t have adequate cooling or HVAC systems. So that’s a pretty large number. They estimate that it would cost about $4.5 billion to upgrade schools or to just even bring in air conditioning in the first place.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: As part of your reporting, you spoke with teachers. How are they feeling about this problem?

JESSICA KUTZ: Teachers are feeling pretty frustrated, I learned. Yeah, I spoke to a teacher in Pennsylvania and another in New York. And so they’re really at the epicenter of this issue. And they’re frustrated because their job has become– as much as it is about the learning and the teaching their students, it’s also become a lot about the safety and having to be aware of how their kids are doing in the classroom, and then also having to deal with all these added distractions because of that. So one teacher I spoke to in Pennsylvania– she’s in Pittsburgh– her classroom was getting up to like 90 degrees, which is very hot.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Wow, yeah.

JESSICA KUTZ: It’s too hot for anyone to be in all day. So they started allowing water bottles so that kids could drink water during the day. But then that means kids have to go to the bathroom, and they’re spilling the water. And, it’s like creating this whole other host of distractions when you have like 30 kids now who are all needing to drink water and take care of themselves.

And it was kind of funny, when I talked to one of the teachers in New York, yeah, he was saying kids are really lethargic. They are tired. And they also, in his classroom, they would put their heads down on their desk because the desk is cool. It’s like a cool surface. So you have kids, essentially, falling asleep on these cool surfaces, just trying to stay a comfortable temperature. And, yeah. And it’s really hard to teach in that kind of environment and for students to learn.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: What about other solutions? Are there other ways that schools and teachers can keep students cool?

JESSICA KUTZ: Yeah, I mean, the best one is just upgrading the school so that they have air conditioning. Another teacher I spoke to said that he does close the blinds, or he’ll turn off the lights. And actually, in New York, the state legislature just passed a law. It’s waiting for the governor’s signature, but it would require exactly that. So when it’s 82 degrees inside a classroom, it would require teachers to close blinds, turn off the lights. And then when it gets to 88 degrees, classes would have to be canceled.

So now, when schools are canceled because of heat, they can kind of revert back to remote learning. We know that has its own issues too. Like, some kids are then home alone and might not have the same capacity to learn from home.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: You’ve mentioned how teachers are taking on a lot more in terms of safety. I wanted to mention that, tragically, there was a school shooting in Georgia earlier this week on September 4. Two students and two teachers were killed. According to CNN, that’s the 45th school shooting in the US so far this year. So how does that safety concern intersect with trying to keep kids safe from heat?

JESSICA KUTZ: Yes, so this was something– it’s just an unfortunate reality of schools over the last few decades with school shootings. Something that schools and teachers used to be able to do before this started happening was they would leave windows open overnight, or they would leave doors open throughout the school to create a cross breeze.

And once they started having to kind of take these heightened security measures because of things like school shootings, all those options to kind of naturally cool down a school completely evaporated with school shootings and the need to keep students safe from this other very real danger during the school year.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Let’s switch gears a little bit. Do we know how heat and being in these hot conditions affects kids’ ability to learn and even to just show up to class?

JESSICA KUTZ: Yeah, so, as I mentioned before, the classroom is just a lot more distracting for learning. There are a lot of studies that show lower abilities to concentrate and to take in information when temperatures are higher. There was one pretty robust one. It was published in 2020. And researchers analyzed the PSAT scores of 10 million students in the country.

And so they looked at students who had higher exposure to heat during the school year compared to those who didn’t. And they found that for every degree hotter a school year was, it resulted in a 1% decrease in learning.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: You’ve mentioned some state level guidelines for what schools should do on hot days. Which states have regulations like that?

JESSICA KUTZ: Arizona is, I would kind of say, a leader in this area, just because, as I mentioned, they’ve been dealing with this for a number of years. So in 2017, they created a heat-ready plan for schools in Phoenix. And what that does is it just creates a series of guidelines that schools have to follow when it hits certain temperatures. Again, some of those are moving around recess or not having recess if it’s too hot outside, taking different measures to keep the classrooms cool.

In California, they’re also trying to pass a new bill that would also create a similar heat action plan. But one of the issues at the moment that policymakers are pointing out is that there isn’t any sort of federal guidance that could help schools maybe make these plans more quickly or have some sort of understanding of what is a temperature that’s too hot for students, or what should we be aiming for? So there is an effort to ask the Department of Education to start creating some sort of federal guideline that schools could look to.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So would you say there’s groups actively trying to get some federal guidelines in place? Because the fact that we don’t have those sounds pretty concerning, especially with temperatures rising. Yeah.

JESSICA KUTZ: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like so many things right now related to extreme heat, is we’re kind of behind the ball a bit in so many different areas of this country and in our infrastructure. And schools is, of course, one of those. So there are some different think tanks that are trying to put pressure on the federal government.

That includes the Center for American Progress, the Federation of American Scientists, and a few others that all signed this letter, really urging lawmakers or urging the government to start thinking more deeply about this issue and trying to bring some urgency to it, because as you mentioned, every year has been hotter than the year before.

So it’s not like a future problem that we have to solve. Schools even this year already have had to cancel or have an early dismissal for class because it’s just too hot for their students. So we’re already seeing a loss of learning. It’s just like so many things related to extreme heat. I don’t think the country has been taking it seriously enough. And it’s just now starting to kind of reach this point where people are starting to pay attention to it.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Before we go, Jessica, is there anything parents can do at home to keep their kids safe when they go off to school?

JESSICA KUTZ: Yeah, there’s a few things they could do. So one, definitely as we were talking about, make sure your child has a water bottle that they can take to school. There are water bottles that are insulated or they’re steel, and so they keep water cold, which is really helpful. Another tip is dress your children in loose fitting, light-colored clothes. That also keeps them cooler.

And then if they do have a health issue or a health concern like asthma or some other concern that makes them more susceptible to heat, they can talk to their teachers and their schools. Most schools do have a portable AC unit that they can bring into a classroom. But sometimes it means there has to be a request. So a parent has to let the teacher know that their student has this health condition. And so usually they can bring in some sort of portable unit to at least help those students.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Jessica, thank you for joining me.

JESSICA KUTZ: Thank you so much for having me on.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Jessica Kutz is a reporter at The 19th News.

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