Two Weeks Down

Student teaching is going just about normal.

Until....the school I am student teaching at gets placed on a lock down for a possible bomb!  SAY WHAT?

Here I am in my clothing class.  My mentor teacher and I are helping the students sew a pillowcase.  The intercom comes on saying that the school is on lock down.  My mentor teacher thinks it's a drill and tells us to keep working, and that if this were real we would all go to the back of the room and crouch together in the corner.  This did not worry me seeing as my first day we had a fire drill.  About 15 minutes later the principal comes on again saying that this lock down is real and teachers need to keep the students in the classroom safe.  Yes, I slightly panicked - who wouldn't?  Some of the girls in the class got a little shaken up too.  What if there really was a person in the halls with a gun.  Gosh our world today has gotten scary!  We probably didn't do the right thing, but we let the students get out their phones and make phone calls - and they probably went to Facebook and Twitter too.  Finally after about an hour of not knowing what was going on they released the students.  I then found my phone and saw the text messages from friends about the high school having a bomb - via Facebook.  Oh gads!

School continued on, and I still knew nothing to what had happened during the lock down.  The next day the papers all read the same short article.  If you would like a good laugh about what really happened at the high school during my student teaching experience read this.  My boss at work the next day practically fell on the floor with laughter because of the object that detained us during our lock down.  What was the object since you didn't want to read the article?  It was a long circular cardboard box (like an oatmeal container) duct taped with pinto beans.  Can you imagine the disappointment when the bomb squad who were using a robot to open the package found a handful of pinto beans.  You made a big to do about that?   What about the poor kid who must have just dropped his homemade project in the school parking lot and now it is ripped to shreds by a robot, causing the school to go on lock down, and making my boss cry tears of laughter from the big to do "bomb threat? " I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.

What can I take away from this grand experience during student teaching?  Well, I was glad I was in my clothing class (even though this class scares me more than a bomb threat) because it made it possible for the students to work on their sewing project, and even finish their project when otherwise they wouldn't have.

Just the joys of student teaching.  I've got two weeks down and ten more to go.  I can and will do this!