Notes from the Field
LEADing Yourself to a Warmer Winter
Firsthand Perspective from Icy Idaho
My cabin is cozy as I tie my shoes, grateful they dried out since being removed last night. I know they will not be warm enough for today, even with the three layers of socks crammed into them.
I push my heavy winter overalls down over them and hope the waterproofing lasts most of the day before stepping out into the fresh snow now blanketing my classroom. I shiver instinctively as the wind blows snow into my face. Today is a day where I will absolutely practice what I teach.
Avoiding the Cold Kindergartner
If you ask any educator, teaching kids is not easy. Adding global pandemics, mixed ages, freezing temperatures, snow, and an inability to go inside to warm up makes the process of teaching even harder. Yet this is my classroom, and this is what I must work with.
I am a field science instructor after all, and this is a core part of my graduate degree program, all these challenges are simply part of the work, even if they feel impossible at times. The main challenges this week are the intense cold and snow. My teaching partner and I had already prepared lesson plans, but while teaching students as young as five the day prior, we realized we needed to address our students needs. More specifically, the need to stay warm.
With that fresh on our minds we sat down, exhausted and still a little cold ourselves, hoping to figure out how we could teach young children to manage their temperatures. We needed to condense the science of heat exchange into something that would be eye-catching, engaging, and enjoyable to children who may still have trouble counting beyond . It was in this meeting of desperation that the LEADer system was born.
I’m happy to report this solution worked well enough that I’m writing it here in hopes that you may find it useful for teaching your own friends and family, or simply reminding yourself how to stay warm as winter begins to set in throughout the Northern United States. LEAD is an acronym describing the four core principles of heat conservation when outside in sub-freezing environments. It also serves as a step-by-step process for diagnosing why you might be feeling cold and how to address the problem. So, bundle up because we are going to get cozy, even in the most frigid environments.
Layers
The principles of LEAD start by checking ourselves to ensure we have the right equipment needed to retain the heat we produce. I taught my students to think of themselves as little furnaces. We have all probably heard someone in our lives tell us some variation of “Shut the door! We aren’t heating the outside!” Well the layers we wear are effectively the “door” that keeps our radiated heat near our bodies. When we wear them properly, the materials and air trapped between them insulate us and reflect our radiated heat back onto us.
To this end, the “L” in LEAD reminds us to check our layers and ensure we have the appropriate ones on. This could mean switching out gloves or hats, adding a jacket, or even changing out our face masks. Whatever the solution might be, the first thing we always check when feeling cold are the layers we are wearing.
Environment
The environment we surround ourselves with has an enormous impact on our internal temperature. I’m not talking about the fact that we are in a snowy field during a blizzard, but rather how we specifically choose to handle that snowy field. This has to do with the heat exchange processes known as conduction and convection. Admittedly, those words are not easy for a kindergartner to understand, so I like to break it down a little more.
In essence conduction is the heat we gain or lose from directly touching our environment. If we stick our bare hand into the snow, the heat in our hand begins to leave the body and warm the snow attempting to reach an equilibrium of temperatures. Similarly, convection has to do with our physical contact to moving air around us. When the wind blows past our bare skin, it pulls with it the heat we are naturally radiating.
So we may find ourselves spending an entire day in a snowy field or maybe just a few minutes waiting for the bus. Regardless of the situation, we want to assess our environment and reduce our exposure to whatever elements pulling heat away from you. If you are stood in the shade, move into the sun. If you are standing in the wind, find shelter from it, and if you are seated on the snow, get up or put something between you and the snow itself. Oftentimes managing our immediate environment is the easiest way to warm up, even on the most frigid days.
Activity
The “A” in our LEAD acronym is the first principle that works to help our bodies generate heat. This is the principle I use most in my field instructing. Teaching in frozen, snowy field all day means I’m often finding myself standing still while observing or teaching students. Because of this, my layers and location in the environment are not always enough to keep me warm for long periods. Activities are the answer to this problem.
If you find me or my students in the field, chances are you will find us doing some form of exercise or activity. I might be pumping my brachial artery with my shoulders, “The Penguin Dance” as we like to call it, to warm my hands. You might see my students leaning against a tree, swinging their legs to increase blood flow to the toes, or you might find us all simply making what my students call a “snow potato” by walking patterns in the snow.
My students and I are doing these things specifically to improve circulation and generate heat, and you will find us doing them quite often, even breaking from lesson to ensure we all stay warm.
There are two considerations for warming activities however, the first is that you do not want to break a sweat. Sweating is the body’s response to overheating and doing so in a freezing environment could cool you down, soak your layers, and generally leave you miserable. The other consideration is the energy you consume doing all these activities. It is not uncommon to find myself exceptionally tired and sore after a long day teaching in the snow, and you will need to plan on eating more to maintain that energy throughout the day.
Defrost
The “D” in LEAD is our last principle, and the final step to consider when “L”, “E”, and “A” do not work. Defrost. Sometimes we simply cannot regulate our heat well enough. Some of our youngest students just cannot seem to produce enough internal heat to stay warm. At this point it is time to begin seeking out external heat sources and shelter from the cold. This could be as easy as going inside a heated building. For our field science program however, this is not always an option due to COVID-19, so hand and foot warmers are always at the ready to offer an additional heat source while we work on setting up fires or getting to shelter where we can all warm back up.
I know this may be common sense for many people reading this, as a part of everyday life in areas where cold winters are the norm. For my students though, it was revolutionary and helped even the youngest kids understand how to begin monitoring their own temperatures throughout the day. In a single day, the kids went from burying themselves in the snow and nearly freezing because of it, to still burying themselves in the snow, but understanding and regulating themselves more effectively throughout the long days.
Layers. Environment. Activity. Defrost.
It is a lesson crucial to the winter environment my students and I work in. It is a lesson balancing complex scientific concepts and the simple methods needed to convey the information to young children.
This is science communication, and it was extremely rewarding to watch them learn how to become that much more aware of the place around them and their own physical needs. They have become LEADers, capable of taking care of themselves and even helping each other when needed.
My students earned a special badge from learning and following these principles. That might not be as impressive a reward for you, but my students loved the incentive and reward. If you are like me and still waiting for those new winter boots to come in the mail, perhaps the greatest reward I can offer is the knowledge that your toes will stay thawed long enough to get home, even while you are outstanding in your frozen field all day like I am.
