Trapped at school for 30 hours!!

Wednesday, February 13, 2007 I was almost done with a long day of teaching school. At about 3:20, ten minutes before the kids get out of schol, I look outside and see that it is snowing AGAIN! We finished cleaning up and I sent my students out to their buses. Fifteen minutes late our principal gets on the intercom and tells all the teachers that they need to leave the school asap because the weather is getting worse. By the time I had packed up all my stuff to leave, the snow storm was so bad that we had no choice but to stay. It was snowing so hard that you couldn't see anything but white, and the winds were blowing 75 mph.

4:30 rolls around and they announce that all eight of our school buses never made it home and that the buses were all stuck. The buses were trying to turn around and get the kids back to the school. The students started trickling in two hours later at 6:30. My students were in my classroom doing anything and everything they wanted. Painting, dancing, playing with playdough, reading, you name it. My classroom was a tornado!

At about 9:30 we still had two buses full of kids that were still stuck (let me remind you that they had now been in the bus for six hours). The police brought kids by the car load back to the school while the other bus was sent to a near by church. By this time parents had brought TONS of food, sleeping bags, and blankets! Most of the kids thought that it was pretty cool, because they made it on the news and they got to sleepover at the school. As for me, I didn't think it was cool that at 12:00 AM the district was still telling us that we would have to wake up and teach school. After much complaining by teachers the district decided to cancel school the following day. And I finally made it home around 10:00 A.M. on Valentine's Day! All I can say is that it was an adventure that most won't ever experience.

P.S. For everyone who has ever wondered if the floors at an Elementary School are comfortable to sleep on, the answer is no! I got about an hour of sleep.