The Bathroom? You Sure?

A couple of months ago the GEMA guy ( GA safety guy) came for his annual, riveting presentation, and I vividly remember him saying that his suggestion for tornado situations would be to place as many students in the bathrooms instead of along the hallway.  I think we all just kind of took for granted that that would never really happen.  Well, today it happened when the code gray watch turned into a code gray warning.  We immediately shuffled our confused third graders into the hallway to resume the position we've taken for so many years during drills.  That is until  we were told to hit the bathrooms.  So down the hall we went where we proceeded to cram four classes into the boys bathroom.  The girls were looking at me as if to say, "seriously?", and the boys thought it was PE- they were pumped.  I even had one use it while we were in there.  His excuse was, "Well I shut the stall door!"  Anyway, the kids were having a ball while we teachers were thrown into claustrophobic attack breathing the stale, hot breath air, lack of air, carbon dioxide.  I was stuffed in the very back with the one kid who was terrified of storms, and once he finally joined the party, I moved to the front to get some much needed oxygen!

We were there for about an hour at least.  The kids did an awesome job.   Of course as a mom, I was concerned about my three kids; 2 were in the school, and Hampton was out at Mrs. Gay's (the bomb of all babysitters).  In a split second, I will go all Momma Bear on somebody if I feel like my kids are threatened.  But I just want to make a quick point.  We teachers will also go Momma Bear for our students.  Our number one concern is keeping them SAFE.  So while a situation like today may seem confusing or even hectic to outsiders, we had it all under control.  And our kids knew they were in good hands.  That's my quick point.