Minimizing Classroom Migraine

It’s Monday morning and Janelle walks into her classroom after having a lovely weekend off where she relaxed, cooked a fabulous Sunday brunch, and did some quiet grading (she IS a teacher after all and rarely do teachers not have to do some weekend work, right?).  

She was feeling pretty great actually.  

Lesson plans and copies for the week were done on Friday, grading is caught up and entered, and she is excited about a new novel the class will be starting today.

Janelle greets her students as they enter and they get started working on their morning work until the bell rings.  

Everything is going great until mid-morning, when Janelle suddenly feels a HUGE headache coming on.  By the end of the day, it is pounding, and she spends Monday evening in a dark, quiet room trying to get it to subside.  

So much for starting out the workweek feeling productive.

Does this sound like your typical Monday?

There have been some lengthy discussions on the Organized Classroom Facebook page about how the fluorescent lights in your classroom could actually be causing headaches.  Not only for you, but for your students too.

I am certainly not a doctor, nor claim to be one in any way, so take this suggestion simply as a suggestion:  many teachers are trying out light filters in the classroom and are having good results.

After seeing many discussions about light filters on our FB page, Educational Insights sent me over a pack of 3 Pete the Cat filters to check them out for myself.

How adorable are these?

They are super lightweight fabric which has magnets around the edges – so they are super easy to attach over the metal lights along the grid!

The covers don’t completely darken the room at all, and all that horrible white blaring light is no longer shining and reflecting off every classroom surface.

I do know some of you are not able to use light covers due to fire code regulations.  For anyone wondering, according to the packaging, the fabric contains a flame retardant coating.  Not sure if that will help you to “sell your case” to your fire marshal, but it might be worth a shot if they have been banned in the past.

Check out my lights before:

And after:

Here is another image from the EI website:

You can check out these Pete the Cat Decorative Light Filters HERE if you need a solution ASAP.

If you have used light filters in your classroom, let us know in the comments how they worked for you.