Back 2 School Tomorrow, Back 2 Normal…?

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These past two days most of the teachers at my school have been at the school trying to prepare for the return of our students tomorrow. We spent yesterday morning in a staff meeting. Our Principal brought us up to speed on what the District is doing for students whose families were displaced by Hurricane Matthew.

The two major factors we will have to deal with when we reopen for students tomorrow are: (1) over 30 roads in the county remain closed due to storm damage, and (2) many of our students are staying either in the one shelter still open in the county or with family and friends outside their normal school zone.

Both factors will affect bus travel the most. The district transportation office has been working with the DOT to come up with safe bus routes that will allow all students who normally ride a bus to get a ride. Also, to the extent possible, the district has been identifying where, within the county, the displaced students have found shelter. If we know where they are, a bus will be sent to pick them up.

I spent these two workdays catching up on grading papers left over from before the storm, rearranging the desks in my room, and, using data gathered about the students in the weeks I’ve been teaching them, assigned seats based on what I think will make the best partnerships. I expect to hear a lot of fuss from the students because they won’t be sitting where they want. I’m also sure I’ll hear all kinds of requests to please let them move.

Students these days, as I’m sure students throughout history have, forget they are in class to learn, not to socialize with their friends. Some of them will receive an awakening when I hand them their stack of missing assignments. Preparing those packets was another big part of what I worked on over the last two days. A few students should be highly motivated to complete the missing work when they see their grades.

Tomorrow we open on a two-hour delay. This is primarily to be sure it is full daylight when the buses make their morning run. None of us are expecting to get much real teaching done tomorrow. I’ve planned a review activity for today and tomorrow to bring the students back up to speed on what we’ve done since the school year started. With the interruption of the school year by the storm, I think reviewing what we’ve already done is a good way to bring the students back into the education mindset.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

A Two Day Lesson In DIY

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Last night we saw a beautiful Harvest Moon over our area. Sadly, for many, the moon reflected off the still receding flood water than inundated their homes. One riverside town in our area may cease to exists after this flood. 40% of the people who resided in the town never went back after Hurricane Floyd flooded its streets in 1999. Many of the residents say Hurricane Matthew was the final straw.

Meanwhile, those of us who can have been helping those displaced by the flood through donations of time, material, and money to organizations such as Catholic Charities, The Salvation Army, Red Cross, and various other churches. The folks whose homes were lost to the flood need everything from toothbrushes and tooth paste to clothes to new furnishings. My wife and I filled our pickup with such items from our own closets, Sam’s Club, and Target and delivered them to Catholic Charities the other day. I am humbled to say the first drop off point we went to, the County Extension Office, has been so blessed with donations they had nearly no room for more when we stopped by. As loads were prepared and sent off to shelters, more room for new was being made. The need is greater than any one warehouse can hold.

Others in the area, not as hard hit, after doing what we’re able, are trying to get back to as close to normal as we can. My wife and I spent a good part of yesterday and most of today working on fixing things around the house. I have learned two important things in doing so.

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The first is, I am no electrician. A friend of mine who is a subcontractor installed a new vent fan and light combination in one of our bathrooms but he is not licensed to do wiring. I looked at the schematic on the instruction sheet and thought it seemed straightforward enough I could do it myself. WRONG. While I have, in the past, successfully changed out a light fixture or two and maybe a light switch here and there, it eventually, after too much time spent hunched over in the attic, that wiring this combined vent/fan was too much for me.

I did get all the wires connected, the ground attached, and thought everything should to smoothly from there. When I turned on the circuit breaker and threw the switch, nothing happened. At that point I knew I needed expert help. I detached the wiring, capped it off, put the tape back over the switch to prevent it from being accidentally activated, and put all my tools away.

Today, we are working on our sunroom floor. My subcontractor friend, who does great work, replaced a section of the floor that had rotted. This morning, my wife and I have been working on taking up the Press-And-Stick tiles we put down over a decade and a half ago during one of our earlier DIY projects. The tiles came up easily enough, with the help of a square edged shovel. That was the easy part. Once the tiles were up, we realized there was going to be a lot more work to do to prepare the floor for the new tiles, or carpet, or whatever we decide on, than we thought.

Such is the life of a homeowner. No project is ever as straightforward or simple as you think it’s going to be. I hope to be able to translate this lesson into my classroom the next time I think something should be straightforward and simple for my students.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Hurricane Matthew Flooding Forces Prolonged School Closings

My creek overflowing my road early on during Matthew

In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, a storm that wasn’t supposed to impact my state with more than a bit of wind and some rain, we are experiencing record flooding as a result of the record rainfall we actually received. Schools have been closed since we dismissed early last Friday afternoon. It is now Thursday morning of the following week. Three of our schools are being used as Red Cross emergency shelters.

The river that runs through my town hit a new record flood stage yesterday and is not predicted to return to “normal” levels until the middle of next week. To make matters worse, several dams in the area have been breached, adding to the volume of flood water. One of the towns in our area has been completely inundated. Fortunately, it was evacuated in advance of the river’s rise.

My wife and I are very lucky. We live in an area of relatively high ground and once the rains slackened off the pond on our property stopped expanding. At its highest level the flooded pond got within ten feet of the house. The creek the pond feeds into is just down the road from the house and it rose to flow over the road to the point vehicles could not pass. Unlike far too many roads in the eastern part of our state, our road did not collapse from the torrent.

Reports yesterday stated that 60% of our county was still without power. Most of the county is under a boil water advisory, including my area. A significant portion of the county is currently flooded. This scenario is being repeated along all four of the major river basins in the eastern part of the state. The pictures and the video being taken are like something out of a Sci-Fi environmental disaster film.

I have been able to get in touch with some of my students’ parents and have received word that they are well and enduring the lack of power and water. I am deeply concerned about those that have not responded to my messages. Today or tomorrow I will be delivering a load of supplies to the shelter at the high school many of my students matriculate to. I am wondering if I will find many of them there.

There have been many heroes over the last week. The fire fighters, the police officers, the rescue squads, the power company line repair crews, the National Guard soldiers, and the thousands of private citizens who have stepped up to help their neighbors in need all deserve our heartfelt thanks and gratitude. Also deserving of recognition are the many food service businesses in the area that, when the could reopen, have offered free or discounted meals to those working to restore order to the county and those who’ve been displaced from their homes. Many grocery stores have also stepped up, offering free water and ice to those folks whose water is undrinkable or who have no water or power.

I want to give special recognition to Papa John’s. As soon as the roads allowed, Papa John’s sent an 18-wheeler from Kentucky to our town. The truck is capable of serving up to 800 freshly baked individual pizzas a day. These pizzas are being offered free of charge to those who have been without power since the storm hit and have not had a hot meal in days. I always respected Papa John for its business acumen. I have newfound respect for the company as a good corporate citizen.

There is no word yet on when classes will resume here in our district. I pray that when they do, all of my students will come back safe and sound.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Matthew, Matthew, Go Away

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The latest news on Hurricane Matthew indicates we here in our area are not likely to see much more than some stiff breezes and about an inch of rain. While I am relieved by this news my students were disappointed. It was their hope that school might close tomorrow in anticipation of the storm, or on Monday in the aftermath of the storm. As it stands now, we will have school both tomorrow and Monday.

My students don't know what it is like to live through an actual hurricane. The last one to cross over our area as 17 years ago.

Of course, it wouldn’t take much of a drift to the north or west to change the impact Matthew will have on us. I have cautioned my students to keep a weather eye out for any changes in Matthews course.

Considering we were learning how to add and subtract rational numbers this week – rational numbers as in fractions and decimals – including positive and negative rational numbers. Most of my students are giving rational numbers a good effort, but a few just threw up their hands when they heard the word fractions. I am doing everything I can to provide my students with the tools they need to make adding and subtracting rational numbers as simple and painless as possible. Fortunately, the rules for adding and subtracting rational numbers are the same as the rules for adding and subtracting integers, with an extra step or two thrown in for the fractions such as finding common denominators and simplifying.

I have a premonition that tomorrow the students may be very distracted as the rain and wind picks up throughout the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if, every time we get a hard downpour or big gust of wind, the students start thinking – and commenting – that the schools should close and they should all go home. Depending on just how far our way Matthew pushes, an Early Dismissal announcement sometime on Friday, while improbable, is not impossible. The bright side of an Early Dismissal is that the day will count and not have to be made up. The down side is we will effectively lose a day of instruction. Considering how much material I still need to cover by the end of first quarter, missing instructional time is not something I like to see happen.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Lightning Strikes! Yikes! Evacuate! Evacuate!

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On Thursday of this past week our school was struck by lightning. I was on my planning period and my students were in their elective classes when this occurred. Because of the storm, all the PE and our other electives located outside the main building were being held in Core Class classrooms so I was writing my lesson plans in the workroom.

I heard several rumbles of thunder and then, outside the window, everything went white. I knew the lightning strike had been close, but I had no idea how close until a colleague came in and told me the building had been struck, black smoke was coming from the section of the building hit, and we were evacuating all the students to the gym.

The evacuation announcement had to be spread by word-of-mouth throughout the building because the strike had caused all the computers and phones to shut off when the breaker flipped. The breaker did its job, and we didn’t lose any electronics, thank goodness.

I immediately went into the hallway and began helping guide students in a quiet and orderly fashion towards the gym. Going to the gym from our building required a short walk through rain as the hallway of the building we usually use to make the trip during inclement weather happened to be the same building the strike had targeted.

The students deserve a lot of credit for the way they conducted themselves during the evacuation. There was no pushing and shoving, very little noise, and they listened to and followed instructions with no hesitation or question. Practicing fire drills and other such emergency procedures sure paid off.

The fire department responded instantly to the situation. We are blessed to have a firehouse right across the street. After inspecting the building that was struck, and the rest of the campus, just in case, they quickly determined how lucky we really were.

As it turns out, the lightning strike had tripped a switch on one of the rooftop HVAC units, causing it to change from air conditioning to heating, activating the heat strips. The burning smell the students detected was the dust being heated by the strips and then circulated through the vents. The black smoke, which had quickly dissipated, appeared to have been caused by the same dust.

After an hour of diligent efforts by the fire fighters and police, it was determined that the building was safe to reenter. Again, our students moved back to their classrooms with the same efficiency and good order with which they’d evacuated.

Us teachers were afraid the excitement of the evacuation would have our students so keyed up that accomplishing any further teaching would be nearly impossible. Such turned out not to be the case. Remarkably, the students, after a relatively few minutes, calmed down and got right on task. The rest of the day turned out to be very productive.

Our students impressed us very much during and after the lightning event. The way they handled the situation was commendable. Now we know they can comport themselves in a manner appropriate to the situation. While that is good news for us, it may be bad news for them, as it raises the bar for our expectations of their behavior.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator