Friday, March 26, 2010

Surprise Drill

"Next period, we're going to have an earthquake evacuation drill."

Uh oh.

It was the morning announcements. The principal had a lot to say this morning, and he closed with that doozy.

Drills are usually planned. In advance. Days. Everybody knows about them ahead of time. This one was sprung on all of us. But we're adaptable.

So, that class came in. I mentioned the drill, but most of them were surprised (they had not been listening to the morning announcements). I quickly took roll, and then it was drill time.

I should mention that I had health classes today. Freshmen.

I explained to the class that we were having an earthquake, and they should duck and cover. Most of them did. A few boys, however, decided to play up the earthquake angle. One of them ran back and forth, acting like he was afraid of the ground shaking. Two others just did the scared face thing.

So, not only did I have to go after the kiddos who weren't ducking and covering, now I had to try to calm idiot boys who wanted to get as much play in as they could. I was not amused.

Luckily, the evacuation part of the drill was fine. Then we got back to class, and I had to get them back in classroom mode. They were having none of it. The same boys tried the play-around angle.

We did battle. I don't know if I won or lost, but we did get through the important stuff that was on the lesson plan.

I don't know why they thought they could get away with this stuff. It's not like I didn't know their names. Plus, I had a good seating chart to refresh my memory. I would not want to be them on Monday.

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