Wednesday, February 20, 2008

You Haven't Lived...

...until you've spent five very long minutes in almost total darkness, on the floor, locked down with a bunch of jacked-up adolescent ESL students.

After a lengthy first language warning, we had our active shooter drill last night. The kids were totally nuts with anticipation beforehand so the first hour of class was a near-total bust. When the drill began, we turned off lights, shut the blinds, and both locked and barricaded the doors as directed. In the event of a real emergency, however, I would likely be a sitting duck given that our classroom doors only lock with a key and from the outside.

We'd be dead anyway given that my students could not shut up. They were giggling madly and taking full advantage of the darkness during the drill. Needless to say, the remaining class time before break was also a bit of a bust since getting them to settle down and focus on descriptive adjectives was nearly impossible.

I just hope we never have to run through this scenario in real life.....

1 comment:

Elisheva Hannah Levin said...

The joys of teaching.
I taught at this private school for a few years where they wanted to prepare us for everything. Cafeteria shooter drills, intruder drills, bomb threat drills, fire drills, lighting alarm drills (I am not making this up). We wondered if the cafeteria drill ought to be expanded to include a food poisioning drill.

Ah, the joys of teaching!