We’ve been having a heat wave in Vermont, in the northeastern United States where I live. The temperature has reached 95° F (35° C). It’s actually hotter here than it was in Saudi Arabia when I visited in the spring. It got me thinking about the effect of heat and other discomforts on our classes and how we approach them.

ESL classes in the U.S. are often “at the bottom of the totem pole”—that is, at the lowest level of importance—in a university setting. The result is that sometimes we end up teaching in classrooms that no one else wants.

When I worked at an intensive English program in Los Angeles, I got to teach in some of the following less-than-wonderful classrooms: [Read the rest of this post on the TESOL Blog.]