Follow these Rules ....

Follow these rules and you'll come out alive. Save for a few scratches here and boken bones there that won't really count in the end. ;)

Yesterday, my school had a practice run for a fire emergency and it took everything I had not to laugh out loud. I mean I didn't want to, but when I actually thought about the 3rd floor students' escape route, it was difficult to suppress the volcano erupting inside. The people on the third floor would be in some serious problem, especially if the flames were out for prey.

Here's why, the decent to safety from the top involved "safe" passage through a vertical tunnel suspended loosely from the veranda. Imagine a free fall down an encased vinyl/polyester tunnel with an inevitable clash of body parts and cement wall if the wind should perhaps be feeling gay and decide to dance with said dangling tunnel. This very dance indeed happened with several students. One banged on the wall so hard that she literally limped across the field to rejoin her classmates after emerging from the "safety" escape. I was left speechless. Because for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why this method of escape would be any safer than just using a plain old rope ladder...

An aside: Besides the recent emergency excitement, today I couldn't help notice my lack of reaction to non participation by my students. If this had happened when I first got here, I would have felt crushed. I would have even gone and tried to wake each and every one of those kids up. But today, I was non pulsed. Hmmmm...