About a week ago, all of the teachers at my school got an email in
their inbox telling us to be on the look out for Mr. G's hamster that
was officially on the loose. Every once in a while, I would check in
with Mr. G and ask him if anyone had found the lost little friend. No
such luck. So of course, none of us were surprised when we began our
day on Friday and noticed a little brown creature hurrying and toddling
on little legs down the hall. All kids were silent and strangely still
as they watched the hamster make her way down the edge of the hallway.
Luckily, three teachers were there and were ready and waiting to catch the
little friend and return her back to Mr. G, who had of course fixed the
cage in preparation for her return.
I happened to be picking up Isabel for our lesson when this whole thing began and we were able to stand from the sidelines and watch the action. Boy did she and I feel
important in the fact that we could give first hand information about
the capture of the lost hamster! "Wow!" I said, "What an exciting
day!!"
And Isabel and I spent our morning feeling pretty happy we had experienced some excitement.
About 1:30 pm, I began to hear noises. Was that a helicopter? Teachers were
quickly leaving their classrooms during planning time to run outside
and look. Helicopters were circling our playground in a very frantic
fashion. Then we heard that the school right next to us was onlockdown and no one was able to leave their rooms.
Shouldn't we not do the same?, we wondered as we stood outside.
One check of the news on the internet let us know that there was a killer on the loose. He had murdered his wife and step children, dropped off his own bloody 3 year old at a
church, and headed down the road. Police had him cornered in his car in
a driveway down the road from us.
We were on full alert. Excitement once again was in the air.
We spent the rest of the day trying to deal with dismissal and ways to get
kids safely with their parents and at home. This meant not letting the
walkers walk, and only letting kids go when their parents showed up.
Trying to arrange this was not fun, but with all of us working
together, we made it happen. At 6:15 we only had four children left, so
we were able to go home and leave them with the administrators.
Friday morning, Isabel and I were feeling pretty special that we were part of
the action. By Friday night, we were all very thankful we were pretty
far away from it.
Our jobs, each day, come with lots of different challenges and excitement. Each day we teachers are called to do some things that are out of the ordinary. On Friday, we had to go
above and beyond and do more. It isn't just a job, it is an adventure
and I am thankful for every exciting and boring time of it.
