A tough day on Friday …
The Summer Institute has been going well. Friday, though, was a tough day. We had a great presentation first thing in the morning, and then read a cool article on reflective teaching (article by Patti Stock, discussion led by Rochelle Ramay), and then did a “working lunch” afternoon with writing groups and multimodal projects. All of this was fine. But there was so much smoke in the air from the hundreds of fires in the north state region that everyone felt somewhat out of sorts. I think the news said that our air quality was around 280 ppm, when 35 ppm is the upper limit for acceptable particulate matter in the air. Even with air conditioned air in the building, it smelled smoky and was overall just nasty. The air is a sickly orange, and doesn’t look natural outside. It’s a little clearer out today, but nothing like blue sky.
Weather forecast calls for a little more breeze, which may help us to clear out some smoke, but there may be more lightning strikes (which is what caused all the fires here in the first place!). I’m crossing my fingers.
June 28 2008 03:10 pm | Daily life