The beep rang out over the computers. The beep of the PA system. "Please excuse this interruption," starts the schools assistant principal. I demand quiet from all the 7th graders as the principal continues. "We are going to go into a modified lockdown. Please have all students return to their classrooms. Teachers, you may continue to teach as normal. My students were in the computer lab in the shared space of the seventh grade pod. I had no idea whether the computer lab would be ok in this "modified lockdown" situation. I figured with language like lockdown, I better not risk it. I tell students to leave their computers and stuff where it is, and go into the classroom now! I get all the students into the room, take attendance just in case, and immediately wonder what I should do now. I riffle through the pages of my substitute folder only to find the information on lockdown procedure to be quite vague. Basically it said, lock the classroom door and take students to the "designated area of the classroom." Designated are? It sort of made sense because this school had LARGE open windows that could never be covered in a timely manner in the event of an emergency. But this was a modified lockdown. There didn't seem to be any immediate danger, just some weird unexplained situation. I checked my e-mail on the slim hope that someone from the office might have thought to add the subs to an e-mail explaining the situation. No such luck. I remembered also that I was not issued a door key as usual at the beginning of the school day. They were all out of sub keys for my pod, so I had to have another teacher unlock my door. I quickly planned that in the event that a "typical" lockdown was later called for, I would have to run to a neighboring teacher to retrieve a key to lock my door.
In the meantime, my current charges were chatting away, unconcerned about the unexpected break in their class period. I watched the clock, worried as the end of class ticked closer and closer. What was I supposed to do at the end of the class period? Would someone remember I was a sub and call me to let me know what to do? These a millions more questions raced through my brain as the seconds continued to fly by. Finally, five minutes before the end of class, the assistant principal's voice beeped through the PA system again. "At this time we are calling the end to the modified lockdown, classes will continue as normal for the rest of the day." I let my students out of the classroom to retrieve their belongings and log off their computers.
Classes did continue as normal. I had several classes of very noisy seventh graders (a Friday with a sub at the end of the school year! Thank goodness it wasn't sunny out too!) At lunch, I asked the other teacher's if this was a planned lockdown drill that they forgot to tell me about or if they knew what had happened. The first teacher didn't know, but assumed the school needed to complete their quota of lockdown drills for the year. A second teacher, however, saw a police officer with a dog in the main hall when he went to close the large pod doors. Suddenly the events of the morning made a little more sense. If the police came to the school with the drug sniffing dogs, they would not want students to be out roaming the halls. No danger, just confusion. And I have yet another experience as a teacher to check off my list. I think the only thing left is teaching sex-ed
No comments:
Post a Comment