Common Sense and Sticking to It...

I don't think my face could have been redder this morning. Literally, my stomach resided right in my throat for most of the day.

Today was our lockdown drill during homeroom period.

You have to understand - I'm a new teacher. I don't know how to do these things. I was literally clinging to the binder I was given that walked me through the responsibilities of a teacher during emergency drills.

Nowhere on that list of responsibilities did it say, "Make sure your class stays silent." I promise. I checked.

So I locked my door, turned off the lights, had my students get down on the floor, and told them they could talk quietly if they wanted to.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Somedays I wonder how I ever got through college.

Hindsight really is 20/20.

To make matters worse, the students were playing a game of hangman on the board (don't judge - it's homeroom and I'm still figuring out what I'm really supposed to be doing in that class) before the lockdown drill.

So what were they saying when our school police officer was walking by to check our door?

"You're so dead!" (not in reference to the lockdown but to the hangman game they were playing)

I cannot begin to tell you the heaviness and panic I felt when, after the drill, the principal got on the intercom and chastised the students overall for not taking the drill seriously, for not being quiet, and for making inappropriate comments like, "You're so dead."

And my homeroom students knew - they looked at me and started the "Ooooo! You told us we could talk!" kind of teasing that every teacher dreads.

What could I do? I admitted to my students that I was wrong and apologized. I told them I took full blame and I talked to them about why it was so important that we stay silent during a lockdown.

Wow. I really need to get some common sense.

(But after talking with one of the other teachers in our department, I felt better knowing that everyone makes mistakes. She told me that - on her first lockdown drill as a teacher - she opened the door when the assistant principal came around and jiggled the door handle to see if it was locked. In a lockdown. She opened the door.  :D Why is the knowledge that everyone is human so innately comforting?) 

And as I look to weekend, I would just like to add my testimony to this:

The funny thing about lesson plans is that they are planned. What happens when the unplanned happens? As much as I would like to be that teacher who plans for everything that is unplanned, the truth is I don't have enough experience to be able to predict and plan for what the unplanned could be.

So when I go through my lesson and start talking about synthesis and say some pretty embarrassing things, I just went with it. Like it was totally planned.

Picture this:

Discussion about synthesis.

We've been taught to provide lots of different synonymous phrases when we're teaching new content - students need more contextualization and more repetition of ideas.

So when we talked about synthesis, I used synonymous phrases like "create new things," "coming to new conclusions," "proposing a new insight," and I decided to provide some context to illustrate my point. Please don't think less of me after this story!

The incident happened like this: "Synthesis can be like proposing a new insight. Propose . . . like when a guy gets on his knee to propose! He's really offering a new insight. He's not just saying, 'Will you marry me?" he's saying, 'You. Me. I think this could really work, the whole happily ever after thing. What do you think? Let's do it.'"

Those last 3 words nearly killed my entire lesson with my eighth graders.

I SO did not mean it the way they obviously took it.

What do you do in those moments???? Where is that part of the lesson plan where I accidentally say something super inappropriate and somehow save myself without losing all credibility? It's not there! Ahh!

So I moved on like I didn't even notice that what I said could be erroneously taken as an incredibly inappropriate comment.

I moved on.

They laughed.

I stopped, waited for them to calm down, and wrote "-10" on the board to let them know they just gave me 10 more seconds of class.

They stopped laughing.

I moved on.

I'm telling you. Stomach in throat all day today.

I dread the comments I will hear in staff meeting on Monday about our lockdown. I dread the emails/calls I might receive from the parents of those students who reported that I talked about  --- shhh ----  "s-e-x" ----- in class today.

Gah.

Oh well. I probably need to be more explicit in my lesson plans so I don't ever say the words "Let's do it" ever again.

Every day = a new adventure.

Things to do over the weekend: get some common sense.