Hot Classrooms, Failing Grades: What Happens When Schools Overheat in Summer
At 10:30 in the morning, the heat in my classroom had already wrapped itself around us like a damp wool blanket. The sun had been up for only five hours, but the high windows, designed to catch spring light, were now turning the room into a greenhouse. A couple of students fanned themselves with their notebooks. One girl had propped the heavy classroom door open with the recycling bin, hoping to drag in some cooler air from the hallway. It didn’t work, but nobody had the energy to admit it.
“Miss, if we open the windows, we’re cooked,” a boy from the back row said. He wasn’t exaggerating. Outside, the air was heavy and still — hot in its own right. Opening the windows didn’t create a breeze; it just let more of the oven in. Meanwhile, the other kids stared at their math papers. It was exam day, and the room was so thick and suffocating that I could almost see the concentration crumbling.
One student, a normally sharp kid who always finishes early, had gone pale. He put his head down. Then he raised his hand and asked to leave for water. I let him go, but I knew what was happening. These weren’t lazy kids. They were just cooked.
This is the part of teaching nobody prepares you for. You plan the lesson, you prep the exam, you think about differentiation and pacing — and then the building itself becomes an obstacle. Our school in Le Locle, Beau-Site, is beautiful. It’s an old stone structure with tall ceilings and thick walls, the kind of building that feels charming in October. But in July, it’s a heat trap. And like most schools in Switzerland, it doesn’t have air conditioning. It was never designed for weeks of 33-degree heat. It was designed for a climate that isn’t quite ours anymore.
I noticed the girl by the door had given up on the trash can. She sat back down, sweaty, and stared at her blank exam paper. “I can’t do this,” she whispered. And that was after only twenty minutes.
When scientists and child development experts talk about heat and learning, they often use words like “cognitive load” and “executive function.” But that translates to something simpler: when your body is too hot, it puts all its energy into cooling down. There isn’t much left over for algebra. Or reading comprehension. Or remembering what the teacher said five minutes ago. Kids get irritable. They fidget. They ask to go to the bathroom just to stand in the hallway where the air moves a little.
In that exam, I saw the direct result. Students I knew could solve these problems a month ago were making careless mistakes. They skipped steps. They misread the questions. The room was hot enough that I almost fainted myself, and I’m paid to be there. So how can we expect a 14-year-old to perform at their best?
This isn’t just a Swiss problem, but it’s one that has been quietly getting worse. We had a heat wave in June, then another in July. Each one, the school holds a bit more heat. Our maintenance team tries. They installed roller shutters on the south-facing rooms years ago, but they only work if someone pulls them down early in the morning — and by midday, it’s already too late. Ventilation systems were supposed to be in the plan for renovation, but budgets get tight, and heating in winter always seems more urgent than cooling in summer.
So what actually helps? I’ve learned a few things, mostly through trial and error. First, kids need more water than they think. We tell them to bring bottles, but they leave them in their bags. So now I stop the lesson for thirty seconds and make everyone drink. It sounds silly, but just a few sips can shift the fog. Second, I move the class to the floor. Sitting low is cooler than sitting up near the ceiling, where the heat pools. We’ve done entire math lessons on the floor near the door — not ideal, but better than watching kids go red in their seats.
Third, we use the shade. If there’s a room on the north side of the building, even if it’s the old music room with awkward chairs, it’s worth moving the exam there. It’s not a perfect solution. The chairs are uncomfortable, and there are always distractions. But a slightly awkward seating arrangement beats heatstroke.
And fourth, breaks. Short, scheduled breaks where everyone steps outside — not to the sun, but to the shaded courtyard — can reset the brain. The kids are hesitant at first. They’d rather just get it over with. But five minutes outside under a tree can do more than twenty minutes of staring at a worksheet in a hot room.
Parents, too, have started to notice. One mother wrote to me after her daughter came home with a headache and a terrible mark on a test she’d prepared for. “She knew it,” the mother said. “She was so upset. She said she just couldn’t think straighter than the heat.” It’s hard to explain to a parent that their child’s failure wasn’t about understanding — it was about the conditions. The knowledge was there. It just got cooked out of reach.
Now, some families are starting to ask the school for changes. Not just for AC — because installing it in an old building is expensive and complicated — but for small things: reflectors for the windows, more fans, sometimes just permission to open the fire escape door, which lets in actual air. The trash can solution the kids tried that day was actually kind of clever. They were building their own rudimentary ventilation strategy. It failed, but the instinct was right. The problem is structural, and no amount of plastic bins or hand fans will fix it.
The school board has promised to look into shades for the playground and a possible cooling system for the upper floors. It won’t be ready this summer. Maybe not next either. So until then, we’ll keep improvising. We’ll close the shutters early, we’ll drink water at noon, and we’ll hold exams in the coolest room we can find.
But as I watched my student turn in her unfinished paper, I couldn’t shake the thought: the heat isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s an unfair disadvantage. And the kids who can’t afford a tutor or a quiet room at home feel it the most.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. The forecast says 35 degrees. I looked at the classroom map this afternoon, trying to figure out which room would be coolest at 8 a.m. It won’t be an airtight plan. But neither was the trash can by the door. Sometimes all you can do is try to make it a little less impossible — and hope the storm they’re predicting actually comes.
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