October 20, 2015
Yesterday construction started outside of the school to fix the water main. There was a lot of noise yesterday, and we knew today it wasn't going to be much better. The principal discussed the situation during the morning announcements and told students to try and tune out the noise and stay focused on what is going on in class. Around 10:45 the principal made another announcement that the water was going to be shut off for approximately an hour. Luckily, 10 minutes prior to that the secretary had come to our room and gave us a heads up. We sent the whole class to use the restrooms and get a drink before they wouldn't be able to. Being curious children, as soon as the announcement was made that there was no water, every student had to go to the bathroom, was in desperate need of a drink, or absolutely had to wash their hands because GermX would not do. Of course, none of this was actually true, all of the students just wanted to see that turning a faucet would not make water come out; flushing a toilet would not actually result in a flush; and pressing the water fountain bar would not result in a burst of water. Needless to say, the entire situation was a huge distraction for all students.
11:45 came around (an hour after the announcement) and we were not informed that there was water back in the building, students returned from lunch at 12:30 and still not water. We continued with our afternoon schedule and got through the daily read aloud and the math lesson. We had just began practicing the This is a Moose play we started yesterday when we got an announcement at 1:10 that we would be dismissing in 20 minutes since water still had not been restored. This wasn't much notice so we had to abruptly conclude the activity and get the students packed to go home.
Today was great practice for me in how to handle unforeseen, unavoidable distractions to the classroom instruction.
No comments:
Post a Comment