Monday, August 18, 2008

My Nightmare Named Fay


Today was the first day of school and everything was going great. My students seemed mostly sweet, we played some games, went over rules and procedures, and got to know each other. I had been thinking the day was going really well until about 1pm. At this time we found out that all the schools were closing Tuesday for Hurricane Fay, which was supposedly coming for us. This normally would have been nice, having a day off and everything since we were not real worried about Fay hitting us, but unfortunately that is when we got the bad news. Our school is lucky enough to be a shelter! This means that from about 2:45 to 6:00 pm I had to TEAR MY ROOM DOWN! Yes, that same completely decorated room that I just posted all the pictures of. Our school has been a shelter in the past and has had disasterous results, such as: permanent marker on the walls, stuff stolen, books ripped, and even poop smeared on the walls. Nice, huh? Needless to say, we were all concerned about our stuff if the school did end up being needed. I had to empty student's desks and keep all their stuff labeled and organized in cabinets, unplug and lock up my computer, projector, and elmo machine, clear off every item on shelves and tables, stuff as much as possible into cabinets and zip-tie them closed, barricade my desk area with student desks, bookshelves, and chairs, cover bulletin boards that have loose items with butcher paper, and turn all my other bookcases to the wall and barricade those with more desks and chairs. I was pretty frustrated about it, but all I could do was laugh. I felt really bad for the first year teachers as well as the veteran teachers that have hoarded things through the years. Some teachers were even crying about it. The bad part is that we are 95% sure that our school will not be needed, but you have to plan for the worst. Unfortunately this means that the students come back Wednesday morning, and I have to be ready to teach! I guess this means I am going in on Tuesday if the weather holds to put everything back.  Darn you Fay!



Zip Ties... that'll keep 'em out! So the office says.
You have to see the before pictures in the previous post to realize the extent of the take down.
What can you do?!
This is our floor's resource room. Since it is smaller, we were promised it would not be used for shelter. Our floor packed it pretty well with important books and such! 

6 comments:

Jenna said...

THAT SUCKS! Oh my I would have died! Sounds like you had a good attitude about it!

Emily Parks said...

that is crazy. I hope everything goes okay.

KatieB said...

um, how are you not crying about this??? i can't believe you're having such a good attitude about it all. hope fay stays away.

Jon + Kat said...

Thanks for pestering me girl! I've been worried about you in Florida since you moved there! We've moved from blizzard country to tornado country to semi-hurricane country and I haven't decided what's worse. I wouldn't know what to do in major hurricane country. It was raining super hard yesterday and I was shaking as I had to drive with my two kiddos to an appointment. Not fun. Of course your classroom was darling! Good luck with this crazy weather! We'll be thinking of you!

Unknown said...

Ugh! What a pain - especially right after getting it all perfect for the 1st day! I can't imagine! Hope you were able to rest a bit on hurricane day.

Austin said...

Crazy! Good luck with all that!