It wasn't a double rainbow...

We had a double fire drill Friday. The first one was a drill. The second one was some turd decided to pull a prank 9 minutes before the dismissal bell rang.

When students asked me if the second alarm was a drill, I'd ask, "Do you think we'd want to have a drill that delays when you get to go home?"

I didn't know it was a prank at the time, so I told the kids it was "70% odds." It was too early in the year for any crazy chemistry experiments, so the other 30% may have been a hot pocket in a microwave accident or something silly like that (I've been guilty of the hot pocket one...)

In some ways, the 2nd round of fire alarms was a good analogy for how the year has been going. The kids all filed out of the room without whooping, yelling, and craziness. They knew the routine and we got through it fine. It was mildly vexing to lose the last minutes of class and it happened in my most difficult class. Even though, I was annoyed I felt like I'd dodged a bullet. If the final bell hadn't rung, I probably wouldn't have been able to call them to enough order to do much. ...assuming all the kids made it back. Several of the more challenging ones grabbed their bags as we were leaving and I didn't see them again.

So...it's like a normal year, but with extra hurdles. Many things are going well and most kids have adapted to most of it. There are holdouts, though. Those are the ones who are protesting the idea of work and/or that their masks have to be worn. I have kids who have completed 10 minutes of classwork who tell me I expect too much. Meanwhile, some of their neighbors finished all the work for the day in 10 minutes and I find myself trying to enroll them to help their peers. Some of it is probably a reflection of which students tried to do work during virtual school and which ones did diddly-squat.

Only thing to do is go forward, though. I took a picture of the back field to tell my students in advance where I'll be hanging out in future fire drills. That way if they get separated from the class (by accident or choice...) they'll know where I am (which eliminates excuses).