All Parts of this Day was Strange

It all started last night. I was getting ready for bed and turned on the TV. The news was on but it was the part just before the sports and the newscaster said, "now just a reminder the following schools will be closed tomorrow" and he listed three schools: a high school, an elementary school that is right next to it and the county technical center that is right next to that. Okay it wasn't that strange but, well it was because our county is huge and we never just have a couple schools out. The other strange part is that there was no snow and no foul weather. We did have a very very windy day and some wind gusts were in the 60 + mile an hour range. The other strange part was that these schools are right down the street from the Juvenile Detention Center where I work as a teacher. I checked the internet and it confirmed that these schools were closed as was the admistration building which is at the other end of the street from me. Hmmm...

So I get up this morning and check the news again and I hadn't gotten a phone call from my principal and so I headed in. Sure enough we had no power. All the teachers and our principal were sitting in the big center room that our classrooms all surround. Okay, so typically the kids come down with the guards and rotate through our classes. So today we have no lights in the classrooms and typically when this happens they lock down the kids in their cells until the lights come back on. It is a security risk. Not that they will escape but they have no video cameras on into our classrooms and with the darkness the kids can do things to each other more easily. So we all sit there and our principal had brought us donuts and coffee so we sat there enjoying. We all figured that we would be able to go home early. I mean we couldn't even really work in our rooms much with the darkness. But NOOOOOO......

We are told that we are going to run a semi-regular day. WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Clean out the ears, yes, I heard right. We would do music therapy, finance/business, reading, PE, and something else. 5 classes for 5 groups of kids and we would all go to the units and hold class there in the center rooms where their cells are, except PE which would be in the gym and music therapy which would be down in the school area in a room that had the most light shining through the window. I was assigned to music therapy with our therapist. So we decide to pull out some puzzles that are in black and white and have the kids work them. They had a good time but it was quite dangerous actually. The kids come down unit by unit and there are about 8 kids per unit. There is no video cameras and they come with one guard. On a typical school day each unit is in a classroom with only one guard but there are no less that three guards that rotate around the large center room and watching the kids through large windows which are the entire half wall facing the large center room. Here, look at the picture and you will see a basic layout of the school area.

So let's just say if a kid wanted to throw a couple of punches while they were in the classroom with us it would be about, oh, 45 second to a minute before anyone else could help. Now we have been trained to back away when a fight erupts. So that would leave the guard by himself to handle it. The kids could easily gang up on us or the guard easily and then there would be no video evidence of the event. Luckily, that didn't happen but I would say on any typical week the tapes of the video cameras are refered to for something or another. We did get out about 45 minutes earlier than a normal day but it was quite strange. The only bathroom we could use today that had generator light was way on the other side of the building from the school area. We had a yucky lunch consisting of overcooked fish (like shoe leather) and collard greens that were overcooked as well. The best part of the meal was the chips-ahoy cookies that were placed right on top of our fish!

The other horrible part was that I didn't have email. So I couldn't contact a person who I needed to contact today, so I had to drag the girls up to my son's cub scout meeting so I could talk to her and get the info I needed. More weird.

Okay, last thing. I go to the grocery store this afternoon. That wasn't weird. But we bought some Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (the kids' favorite), and I am scooping it out tonight after dinner and there are hardly any chocolate chips in it at all. Where did they go?