A cold atmosphere can affect student performance in school. When the temperature drops and you begin to feel the cold seep through your body parts, your brain will communicate with your body. As if by magic, you start doing things to get warm. You will be unable to concentrate or do much as your main focus will be on keeping warm.
Depending on the location, the temperature conditions of a classroom can alternate between different levels.
In areas where normal levels of physical activity occur, regulations set out by the Education (School Premises) Regulations 1999, state that the appropriate minimum temperature was 18ºC (64.4ºF).
In areas where there was a lower than normal level of activity (like an empty gym) or higher than normal level of activity (like washrooms), the appropriate minimum temperatures were 21ºc and 15ºc respectively.
On 31 October 2012, the regulations were replaced by the School Premises (England) Regulations 2012. They no longer specify minimum temperatures for any parts of a school.
The guidelines on school temperatures typically focus on not just primary institutions but also secondary education institutions. However, procedures should be implemented to show what is required in every classroom, irrespective of the degree of learning.
So what do you do if your school fails to meet with minimum heating criteria in a classroom? Students may find that they need alternative options to stay warm.
So how can students keep themselves warm in school without a jacket?
As a student, you probably are not in a position to change the rules of heating in your school. There are however a couple of tips and tricks that you can use to keep warm in school without a sweater. Allowing you to concentrate your brain resources on your classes.
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Eat the right fatty meals.
Fat is often balanced by a normal body response, which gives it a derogatory name. But then, to create energy and promote cell growth, the human body relies on fat. In protein and carbohydrate, fats produce nine calories per gram, meaning they are more energized and keeps you warm.
Not all fats are healthy, nutritious fats. Monounsaturated as well as polyunsaturated fat cells are the most beneficial option. They can be gotten from foods that include fatty fish, avocados, almonds, dark chocolate, and much more.
Any of these are also present and are often said to help enhance brain strength. This ensures that eating them during mealtimes and having them as snacks can also help keep the brain active and warm you up at school.
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Layer Up
One of the more underrated ways of staying warm in school without a school is to properly layer up. At a basic level, you need 3 items to layer up well.
A base layer, mid-layer and an upper layer.
A good thermal base layer will often be sufficient in mildly cold weather. The normal outfit that you would wear to school will then go on top of that. This will often be enough to wear for most people sitting in a classroom.
A suitable upper layer will be a thick-lined jumper or sweatshirt. Most people wear an upper layer while travelling to or from school but need to remove them when in class.
If you expect a sudden downpour, then wearing a waterproof upper layer will be the sensible thing to do.
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Harness your mental power
A 60-year-old Dutchman – Wim Hof – but often referred to as “The Iceman,” left a lot of confused scientists in his wake. He went against the norm and combated freezing temperatures while keeping his body temperature average. The scientists hypothesised that Hof stimulates brain chemicals when subjected to cold.
This releases good hormones and helps your body suppress feelings of discomfort and cold.
In a school, you can also harness your mental power and keep your thoughts off the pervading cold air and focus on the lesson at hand. Just by doing by that, you will eliminate brain impulses that alert your body to the cold air around you.
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Take a Hot Beverage
The body consists of 70% water. So a large cup of coffee or tea would not warm up the body’s level of fluid. This could clarify it is often suggested that just drinking a hot drink will not really keep you warm.
In many cases, just thinking about a hot drink can make you warmer and have a warming effect on you. Your body gets a feed from the brain that a hot drink is being consumed, and you feel yourself getting warmer as well.
So, something as simple as taking slow sips of a hot drink in school will help you feel warmer.
A cup of beverage can be replaced by hot bottle water. It is important to note that hot drinks do not return the everyday water needs within your body, even if they can add to your fluid levels.
The Institute of European Hydration claims that during cold seasons, we lose quite enough body water as we do in the hot seasons. This is particularly the case of sweating, and the many days we use the bathroom and pass out the urine.
Final Thoughts
There is no telling how uncomfortable a cold school can make you and distract you from the class material in front of you.
If your school does not adhere to the widely recommended temperature, then looking for alternative ways to stay warm become all the more important. Sipping warm water or hot drinks, eating the perfect fatty food, including using your mental power, are a number of ways to keep warm without a jacket.
Not all of these strategies will work for everyone that tries them. To see which one fits well for you, you’d have to test one, two or all of them.
To get the most benefits, however, you should probably try using all the methods together.
