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Fire Drill!!!

So today, as part of my usual Thursday morning routine, I volunteered at the school for Miss Eliason in Sarah's first grade class.  I was signing in in the office when the vice principal informed me that there would be a fire drill at 8:25 and that I would be required to leave the building with the students.  Okey dokey.  I went into the classroom and received my assignments for the day and decided that I needed to warn Regan Holdaway, my sweet four year old charge on Mondays and Thursdays, of the loud noise that would be blaring in about 20 minutes.  I dutifully went about my volunteering when the alarm sounded as promised.  A couple of children were startled, but no one was out of sorts.  Miss Eliason instructed the children to get their jackets; I forgot mine, darn, then to line up at the door.  There are only nine students on her "A track" roll so it was very easy.  We all filed out the front door with the other classes who are assigned to exit that door.  It probably only took about two minutes to get the entire school out and orderly lined up on the grassy area on the north of their school.  About a minute later the fire truck arrived, no sirens or lights, by the way.  

While we were standing outside in the crisp morning autumn air.  I felt tears well up in my eyes, "what?"  The kids were energetic and happy, the teachers were calm and enduring, the sky was blue and the sun shone on the autumn leaves making them glow in brilliant hues.  Not only was it a beautiful fall day, it really was a routine, ordinary, unemotional fire drill.  Where did that come from.  I opened my eyes really big to get rid of the dampness and attempted to assess where the emotion was coming from.  Mostly I felt grateful.  Grateful for prepared administrators and teachers.  Ones that I know would risk their lives to protect the children, my children.  I felt grateful too for the fire fighters whose very occupation is selfless service.  I was grateful that the school had had a "lock down drill" just weeks before.  The thought of that ever not being a drill was too much to contemplate.  I thought of myself being just a few blocks away and wondered what the protocol was for picking up children should this not have been a drill.  I asked Miss Eliason if there was a location the the children would be taken to should they need to evacuate the school grounds and be picked up. There is a church a few yards away and she said that would likely be the place.  I wondered how I would get to them and how afraid they would be, we would be.

Sometimes getting children to school is an act of combat.  Sometimes letting them go is an act of courage.  We turn our children over to the system for six and a half hours a day five days a week nine months of the year for thirteen years.  Parents hold many hopes for them in our hearts.  We rejoice in their success and hard work.  We mourn when someone is mean to them or when they are mean to someone else.  We do more homework with our own children than we ever did for ourselves!  This is not something I contemplated before having children, maybe if I had I wouldn't have had as many!  Kidding! We are happy to see them when they return, most of the time.  We breathe a sigh of relief when they graduate and are ready to move onto the next phase of their lives. (I'm assuming this will be true; I have 3 3/4 years before experiencing it.)  My kids are different from me in the way that they learn and the way that they experience "school."  I'm learning a lot from them and learning to admire them for working through their diverse struggles. (This topic will likely become a whole long post written at another time.)

Back to the fire drill.  It took a total of ten minutes then it was back to "business as usual" in the classroom.  For me, it stirred up unexpected emotions and a reason to blog.

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