Just Another Manic Monday
Every month, schools are required to have a fire drill. If you pay close attention, you can tell it is coming, because principals, guidance counselors, secretaries and janitors all have roles to play and assume their positions before the alarm goes off.
Today, right after we returned from specials and had let our kids go to their first classes, the fire alarm sounded. I was a bit puzzled because I thought the administration would at least wait until our kids were safely in their classes before pulling the alarm. It's never a good idea to pull the alarm with kids wandering around - seriously.
Silly me. When I got outside with my class, my teaching partner had two different groups - my own homeroom and her homeroom. She was trying to pawn off a class to me, but, as I pointed out to her, I already had a group. Kind of like a Chinese firedrill. I kind of knew something was up when I looked over at the front door and spied the Principal and Assistant Principal.
Apparently they were kind of in the dark, too. They hadn't pulled the alarm - one of the ladies in the kitchen burned some butter and it caused the smoke alarm to go off. Once that happens, it's all automatic.
The funny thing is that firemen were in the building teaching fire safety.
Labels: teaching school
posted by teachergirl at 8:32 PM
7 Comments:
Does the fire marshall ever arrive unannounced at your school to pull the alarm and time the exit?
fun times, every year.
Your cafeteria gals COOK??? Seriously? Ours heat up pre-cooked food. Pretzels are an entree, and pickles count as a veg. No wonder we have an obesity epidemic.
Our principal is really good about timing our drills correctly, and doing it when the weather is halfway decent. As if my hair needs another reason to frizz.
We had our fire drill last week. My favorites are the lock down drills, where we have to sit ON THE FLOOR with the little children and keep them quiet.
How was the lunch? Tasty?
raidergirl: Our firemarshal comes to tell us we have too much stuff on our walls. Never seen him/her at a drill. Just wait. Probably hasn't read my blog yet.
Debbie: There is some cooking in our cafeteria and until a year ago, our fifth graders got to spend an entire day in there, doing the whole deal. It was glorious as a teacher because they were GONE. They learned a valuable lesson (why education is important and how hard the cafeteria ladies work) and I got a whole day to myself. Good times.
Cupcake: We've practiced our fire drills but not our tornado drills. And last week, we had a tornado WARNING and we had to duck and cover for-freaking-ever with a tornado in the vicinity. With the severely autistic children freaking out. And my 5th graders looking around going WTH? And the 2nd graders crying... almost. More good times. And lunch? I only drink the iced tea.
Ha! At least it was convenient for the firemen...
We had one today but luckily it was planned, weather was great, and it was at a decent time in the day. The closest thing we have had to "cooking" setting the fire alarm off was burnt popcorn....not so exciting.
I remember my only fire drill in HS. The bell went off and we all shuffled dutifully out, as bored as only 10th graders can possibly be. The exhortations to move "quickly but orderly" were disregarded. We treated it as a brief, unscheduled break.
When pressed on (rather heatedly, I thought) why we didn't do the QBO and how did we know it wasn't a real fire...I blurted out something like "Because there was Fr. ______ standing there with a counter and a stopwatch."
-J.
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