Training

It was a long day. The dreary weather had everyone feeling droopy, and my kiddos were harder to engage than usual (to say nothing about the 7-8th graders... their class was rough). After school I had plans to buckle down and cross things off my to-do list, but it wasn't meant to be.

A stranger showed up after the buses left. He had a clipboard and looked pretty well put together, not a dangerous sort. We couldn't figure out who he was and why he was here. Then one of us remembered a topic at our last staff meeting about doing active shooter training sometime in September. Today was one of our top choices for the training. Except no one told us it was officially on the calendar. So we had an impromptu (for us) session. It was depressing and sad, but good.

Instead of schools going into lockdown mode, law enforcement officers are teaching people to Run-Hide-Fight, depending on the situation. Barricading the door is a big yes, and escaping is also a yes if you can do safely. We need to come up with a few safe rendezvous points for kids/teachers to go to if a situation were to happen and we escaped school. Then we can do headcounts of our students. Also, to cut down on congestion when parents come to pick their kids up, we could have the buses pick people up from the safe zones and drop kids off at a central location parents know about (but is away from the school). Lord willing it will never happen to us, but it's always good to be prepared.

Mr. E will work on putting an action plan together with this officer. When it's done, he's going to come back and talk to the upper grades about what to do, and also to parents so we're all on the same page (and explain why we're doing things the way we're doing them). Whew.

After that I had a short time in my room before we teachers headed over to the Ice Cream Social fundraiser at church for supper. It was fun to interact with them in a social setting, plus I could talk to a bunch of church people I needed to talk to all in one place!

We're starting a once-per-week lunchtime book club- 5-6th grade girls are the primary members, plus a sweet older lady from church who volunteers at school often. She's very excited to start next Tuesday! The girls unanimously picked out the book today before lunch.

Some of the girls have expressed an interest in learning how to sew, so I talked to a different lady about doing sewing lessons during afternoon recess (the time those students requested). We haven't set up a specific date to start. I brought my sewing basket from home and another student said she'd bring scraps for the girls to use. We might start tomorrow if she remembers to bring the stuff.