The Fire Alarm

A kid threw a match in the wastebasket in the boy's bathroom today, forcing us out of the building. At least the idiot picked a decent day to go pyro on us. Mid-40's and partly sunny. I'll take that.

The funny thing about fire alarms is that the kids all yell "Yeah" in unison with the first flash of the light and whoop of the bell. Teachers groan and beging to fumble around for our keys and a blank notecard and pen. We are supposed to exit the building, keeping our class together, and record the attendance. Did everyone make it out alive? Yes or no. Of course, this is theory. In practice, once the kids hit the door, they scatter in all directions like hairspray out of an aerosol can. Some race up the hill behind the school, hoping for a quick smoke. Some play hide and seek among the cars. Most just flow together in one big mass of smelly humanity. I was lucky in that the class in which the alarm sounded was my honors class. Good kids who actually clotted together long enough for me to account for all heads before going off to find their friends.

Luckily this was a minor event. We've only had one serious evacuation of the building during my tenure, and that was in response to a vaguely threatening note found on the floor at the height of the Columbine paranoia. That was a nuisance. It was cold, rainy and we were outside for several hours before the students were sent home. They were totally off-kilter in that they had to leave everything behind in the school. No one was allowed back in to get personal items. We teachers decided the policy of building exclusion did not apply to us and we snuck back into our classrooms for purses, keys and laptops.

I had to laugh, though, at the new student that I got for my honors class today. He's a foreign exchange student from Sweden and this was his first day. He had originally been slated to be placed in another biology section that is filled with monkeys. Behavior problems and non-motivated kids. Not really a good environment for a kid away from home in a different country. So, I volunteered to put him in my honors section, since those kids are very sweet and happy. So, poor kid walks right into a class filled with bubbly kids and then we flee the building under an umbrella of flashes and sirens. Welcome to America.

So, the administration will now spend time trying to find the culprit. I'm sure, by now, every kid in the building knows who did it, but management will likely never solve the case. Basically, same ol' story for almost every occurrence in school. I'm just happy it didn't cut into my prep time this afternoon. I needed my nap and Diet Coke...