Mar

5

I’d forgotten there’d been a total eclipse of the moon last night

Filed Under "At-risk" students, The Way I See It 

eclipse.jpg I don’t know. It seemed like a regular Monday morning. But, there ‘d been that total eclipse of the moon last night. I forgot about , so I wasn’t really prepared . My grade nine class, my special class of eight a kids, came in tired as usual, certainly not up for the sparkling lesson on fractions that I’d planned for them. But, I didn’t notice anything really unusual . Actually, I was quite pleased how things were going (let that be a lesson to me) when all of a sudden two of the boys started to fight- they’d obviously been watching hockey games very closely because that’s how they were fighting. I finally pulled them apart and called the office. No one was answering the phone. Great. I tried again and got through. I sent the boys down to the office and took a deep breath. Just then an announcement came over the PA sytem that we were to start the practice lock- down.

Practice lock -down. Oh no. I had forgotten. Ever since some high school kids in the USA got killed in school by intruders, we’ve been having lock-down drills just in case. You know, just like we have to have fire drills in case of a fire. Everyone is supposed to lie on the floor at the back of the room, away from the door and not talk. I’m supposed to lock the door and turn off the lights so that the room is dark, and we are to be silent until an announcement is made to tell us the lock down was over. We don’t want any intruders to know that we are in the classroom.

I told the kids what had to be done and then locked the door and turned off the light. Immediately another fight broke out . I turned the light on, and it was awful. One kid had put his arm around another kids neck and was choking him , just for fun apparently. The victim was gagging and spitting on the floor while trying to scream. I was not amused. I restored order, waited for the lock-down to be over and then continued to teach my sparkling lesson on common denominators.

Tomorrow is another day.

sunrise.jpg

Comments

2 Responses to “I’d forgotten there’d been a total eclipse of the moon last night”

  1. Jason on March 7th, 2007 12:42 am

    Once again I am bowled over by your courage and at the same time I am shocked by the concept of a “Lock Down” in schools. I am speechless that this is going on. Instead of ridding society of guns we are teaching people how to hide from them. stunned into silence.

  2. Elona on March 10th, 2007 6:21 am

    Jason, it’s a sad commentary on our times.

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