Students and staff in D-wing spent Sept. 28 without power.
The power was shut off at Carlmont for construction purposes, but when turned back on, D and E-wing’s power stayed off. Although E-wing’s power was restored in time for school, the entire D-wing remained in the dark for all of Monday.
Principal Ralph Crame emailed staff over the weekend, asking E and D-wing teachers to plan accordingly in case power was not restored in time for classes on Monday.
“I apologize for the inconvenience this causes. The district electricians and [plant manager] Jerome Harris have been working extremely hard to restore power all weekend… right now it looks like we will be without power for at least Monday,” said Crame in his email.
Lack of power in the D-wing meant teachers could not use their SMART Boards for lectures, and computer-dependent classes were without Internet access. Despite the inconvenience, computer science and calculus teacher David Lai was able to adapt his lesson plans to the situation.
“Luckily, I had planned to do an unplugged activity for today. The power outage mostly affected my math classes,” said Lai. “Since the SMART Board didn’t work, I had less room to write, but there’s nothing wrong with going old school sometimes.”
Junior Ajia Grant said, “The power outage didn’t make that big of an impact on me really, since most of my classes are not in D-wing. However, for BC Calculus with Mr. Ramroth, he wrote all the notes and homework problems on the white board instead of showing them on the SMART Board like he normally does. The only effect of that was that I struggled to read the board since I sit in the back.”
Victor Li, a junior in Matthew Miskelly’s AP Calculus AB class, noted how well his teacher rose to the challenge of teaching without the usual SMART Board lectures.
“I barely noticed we had a power outage cause my math teacher improvised really well. We used the whiteboard when we had to,” said Li.
The power came back on around 4:30 in the afternoon, so students and staff can expect a normal school day tomorrow, Sept. 29.
