Today’s story starts with an interesting twist. Yesterday was our first snow day of the year. I know what you are thinking and in fact it was 96 degrees outside. Our HVAC chiller was down and so it was sweltering the day before and would have been worse yesterday. We moved to asynchronous classes on the second full day of classes and many students hadn’t even gotten full access to their online learning tools. We are all praying for quick and skilled HVAC technicians. On to the story of the day….
There are students that stay with you forever and become part of the folklore of a career. I have made a conscious effort to focus on the the students that have added a positive twist to that folklore. Elliot was one of these students. He was one of nicest and joyful students I have every had. He also looked like a bowling ball on a couple of toothpicks. I was teaching literacy to second language learners. at the time Primary grades in the morning and intermediate grades in the afternoon. Elliot was in my morning group and earlier in the year when he was in his regular class the fire alarm went off and the teacher warned me that he was afraid of loud noises. I was always on alert and since most fire drills are planned I was able to prepare. Back in those days the fire drill horns were in the hallways except in the mobiles and those were in the rooms. Guess where I was teaching? Teaching in the mobiles had some advantages that I loved but the in-room fire horn was not one of them. The other factor that is needed for the prologue is that there are occasional fire drills run by the local fire department and those were unannounced.
An unannounced alarm came my way one day and when it sounded I went into action. I got to the the door very quickly but not fast enough to contain Elliot. He was out the door, down the stairs, and on his way home. I was in a panic because I hadn’t lost a student yet and today was not going to be the day I did. I told the other students to follow me! We went out after Elliot as a group. He was about 50 yards ahead of us and it took about a block and a half before Elliot’s adrenaline ran out. He was hunched over trying to catch his breath when we got to him. We gathered him up and assured him it would be okay. As we returned we noticed the principal counting the classes on our side of the building. She counted once and then again and did not get the right number. By this time we were huddled behind one of the mobiles and waited. The fire department representative and the principal went back inside to hunt down the missing class somewhere in one of the other playgrounds. When she did we just casually strolled back to out assigned spot. She came back out and counted and came up with the right number and so we were all released back to our classes. She was relieved that we hadn’t lost a class and I was relieved that I hadn’t lost Elliot. I never found out if she knew which class was missing and I never asked. We just all went back to our daily lives. As I think about it now, Elliot would be in has late 30’s now I hope he is doing well. He did leave me a great memory and I hope he has fond memories of our time together.