I was thinking back to the end of last school year when I was asking
myself, “where has the summer gone!” and thought, what
an interesting end to the school year we had in May! I
had shared a few of the things that were going on with some Facebook friends,
when one of them referenced whooping cough and bears, wondering what else could
happen. Bouncing from one thing to the
next, I had missed the obvious . . . I have my title for “my book!” Every educator references “the book” they
could write based on the incredible things that happen each day in their
classroom or in the school. I had vowed
that I would write those things down, but haven’t taken the time to do so. However, now I have a title . . . Whooping Cough and Bears. I think that has a hook that will lead people
to at least pick this book up and take a look!
Every teacher has a story to tell, and just when you think you have
seen it all, you get a phone call at lunch telling you that we are on lock-down
because of a bear in the area! Yes, my
immediate response was, “What!?!?!?!”
Needless to say, that situation worked itself out quite well, and I
didn’t need to heed the request of one of my hunter-staff members to position
himself on the roof with a rifle to protect us! The whole whooping cough thing had some many stops and starts that people around the building had a glazed look in their eyes wondering whether we were ever going to be "cough free."
My memory has never been really good on things like this, but how can
I forget the first day of school my first year at North Fayette when the
tornado sirens went off and we were pulling kids off the practice field and out
of the volleyball practice and putting them in shelter, only to have staff
members standing outside watching the funnels pass near by! What the heck! I was thinking these “noreasters” have a
little different perspective on tornados than we folks from the western part of
the state!
We are fortunate from time to time to see the clips of Art Linkletter
and Bill Cosby interviewing kids, who say the darndest things, but through our
careers as teachers we often have some of those same experiences. There have been instances when students ask
questions that leave us with our jaws dropped and that look that says,
“What. Are. You.
Talking. About?” Unfortunately, few of us bother to write
those down.
As I reflect a little bit on this, I am pretty sure that I am short on
subject matter for a book. I do recall the time when one of my students fell asleep in class and we
successfully evacuated the room without waking him up, turned the clock on the
wall ahead a couple of hours, turned off the light, and waited in
the hallway for him to emerge, thinking he had slept through the end of the
day. That look of panic on his face when
he burst from the room thinking it was 5:30 and he had missed most of
basketball practice was priceless! Boy,
I wish I had written more of those things down!
