By Samuel C. Villa Jr., associate professor at Cebu Technological University Main Campus-Dumanjug Extension
There is something uniquely frustrating about teaching a night class when the electricity suddenly disappears. You prepare your slides, charge your laptop, arrive ready to teach, and your students are equally ready to listen. Then, just as you are about to explain the most important concept of the evening—click. Darkness. For a few seconds, everyone becomes quiet. Then someone inevitably asks the question every professor has learned to dread: “Sir, brownout again?” Yes. Again. As a professor handling night classes, I have experienced how quickly a carefully prepared lesson can be disrupted by something completely outside the classroom. A discussion that requires presentation materials suddenly becomes a discussion from memory; a video demonstration becomes storytelling; and when the classroom gets dark and warm enough, even the most attentive student begins looking toward the door—not necessarily to leave, but perhaps to remember that ventilation is also part of education.
The ongoing rotational brownouts are no longer merely an inconvenience for households and businesses. They have become an educational concern, particularly for colleges and universities whose classes extend into the evening. A power interruption does not simply turn off the lights. It can interrupt concentration, reduce instructional time, disrupt assessments, affect attendance, interfere with presentations, and force professors to redesign lessons on the spot. For working students who attend evening classes, the impact can be even greater because their available learning time is already limited. And when classes shift online, the problem does not necessarily disappear. The professor may be online, the student may be online, and the internet may even be ready—but electricity has apparently decided to take the evening off.
This situation warrants serious attention from the higher education sector. Resilience is important, but resilience should not mean pretending that the problem does not exist. Institutions need practical contingency plans for prolonged power interruptions, particularly for evening classes. Flexible learning arrangements, asynchronous activities, downloadable materials, alternative assessment schedules, and reasonable adjustments to instructional time should not be emergency improvisations; they should be part of institutional preparedness. Professors can prepare offline materials, students can download readings and activities in advance, and institutions can establish clear protocols for disrupted classes. At the same time, power providers and policymakers must continue working toward a more stable electricity supply.
For higher education, time is instructional capital. When a two-hour class loses a significant portion of its time due to a brownout, we cannot simply pretend nothing happened. The lost instructional time may mean rushing the next lesson, reducing meaningful discussion, postponing an assessment, or adding pressure to an already crowded academic calendar. As a night-class professor, the brownout keeps reminding me of one humbling truth: a professor may control the classroom, but apparently not the switch. We can control our preparation, teaching strategies, assessments, and response to problems, but we cannot control when the lights go out.
Still, Scripture reminds us not to lose heart in difficult circumstances. Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Likewise, Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us that “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” Perhaps the lesson for educators is that good teaching sometimes requires flexibility—the willingness to adjust without abandoning our purpose.
So when the electricity disappears, perhaps the question should not only be, “When will the power come back?” but also, “How do we keep learning going while it is gone?” The lights may go out. The projector may stop. The Wi-Fi may disappear. But learning should not have to. Higher education cannot depend entirely on electricity to function, but neither should teachers and students be expected to compensate for an unreliable system without continuous institutional support.
Because when the classroom goes dark, our commitment to education should remain switched on.
