Raising Hell
I gladly left for work at 6:30 am and arrived home at 8 pm. The school day itself was uneventful, but the newspaper meeting - wow.
The paper just needs to be revised a final time. Then we have one last edition to push out in the next three weeks. In the midst of the small army, furiously working on the newspaper this afternoon, the principal jumps on the intercom. "Please evacuate the building immediately. There is a gas leak in the south hall."
That's my hall.
Damnit.
At this point it's almost 5, and the computers were finally warming up the room. So I grabbed my purse -keys, cell, money- and escorted the kids out the door. We settled on the grass and started talking about the role poetry should have in our newspaper when I realized that if the building did explode, we would die. We proceeded to move to a place that wasn't actually next to the stacked bricks.
Then we cursed. We cursed at the sky for not bringing a camera. This is breaking news! Ideas brewed and we contemplated making a student pose like he was diving away from an explosion. Everything was figured out: we knew exactly who would throw the brick at just the right time to make it look like the building was really crumbling.
It didn't take long for the topic to spiral into about twenty others, and we were soon back in the classroom working.
About twenty minutes later, the fire alarms went off. The two students who went to go check on our cooking pizza came running back into the classroom. Uh. The pizza wasn't burning, it was just responsible for evacuating the entire high school and middle school.
The staff evacuated a second time. I trod down the hall to take the pizza out and let my mind imagine a flaming kitchen.
I arrived to the classroom and received a precious look of death. The custodian took out the pizzas, which looked perfect. I inspected the oven to find that it hadn't been cleaned for a long time. Ahah! It wasn't us, at least not completely.
I went back outside to the still-not-discouraged-newspaper-staff. We watched the middle school continue to evacuate. They were carrying trays of food. I guess they were having a formal dinner. We ruined it.
Oh well. Shit happens.
We waited outside for about twenty minutes before we decided to work through the pulsing alarm. I told the students we all had to eat one piece of the smoked pizza, since it was probably the most controversial pizza they'll ever consume.
I thought I was clever; they didn't buy it. The pizza fell into the trash.
The night solved remaining white space.
The paper just needs to be revised a final time. Then we have one last edition to push out in the next three weeks. In the midst of the small army, furiously working on the newspaper this afternoon, the principal jumps on the intercom. "Please evacuate the building immediately. There is a gas leak in the south hall."
That's my hall.
Damnit.
At this point it's almost 5, and the computers were finally warming up the room. So I grabbed my purse -keys, cell, money- and escorted the kids out the door. We settled on the grass and started talking about the role poetry should have in our newspaper when I realized that if the building did explode, we would die. We proceeded to move to a place that wasn't actually next to the stacked bricks.
Then we cursed. We cursed at the sky for not bringing a camera. This is breaking news! Ideas brewed and we contemplated making a student pose like he was diving away from an explosion. Everything was figured out: we knew exactly who would throw the brick at just the right time to make it look like the building was really crumbling.
It didn't take long for the topic to spiral into about twenty others, and we were soon back in the classroom working.
About twenty minutes later, the fire alarms went off. The two students who went to go check on our cooking pizza came running back into the classroom. Uh. The pizza wasn't burning, it was just responsible for evacuating the entire high school and middle school.
The staff evacuated a second time. I trod down the hall to take the pizza out and let my mind imagine a flaming kitchen.
I arrived to the classroom and received a precious look of death. The custodian took out the pizzas, which looked perfect. I inspected the oven to find that it hadn't been cleaned for a long time. Ahah! It wasn't us, at least not completely.
I went back outside to the still-not-discouraged-newspaper-staff. We watched the middle school continue to evacuate. They were carrying trays of food. I guess they were having a formal dinner. We ruined it.
Oh well. Shit happens.
We waited outside for about twenty minutes before we decided to work through the pulsing alarm. I told the students we all had to eat one piece of the smoked pizza, since it was probably the most controversial pizza they'll ever consume.
I thought I was clever; they didn't buy it. The pizza fell into the trash.
The night solved remaining white space.
