Well my feet are officially aching after a VERY long day. And standing in the bathroom for an hour and a half with 45 5th graders didn't help too much!

Around 2:20 we started hearing tornado sirens in our classrooms. I looked in the hallway as did all of the other teachers and sure enough our Assistant principal was telling us to go to our Tornado drill location. For my classroom it is the girls bathroom in the hall. we share this location with another 5th grade class. So 2 classes of 5th graders were ducking and covering in the bathroom.

For the first 10 minutes of the drill some students were being called out because their parents were coming to get them. Then that stopped because the entire district went on lock down. The principal was telling them they could either come in and sit in the drill with them or go home. At first I thought that the drill would be over soon, but 2:50 (Dismissal time) came around and we were still in the bathroom! We went and grabbed a book so we could read to the kids while they waited. Finally a little before 4, we told the kids they were to go straight to where their dismissal area is and to just leave their backpacks. We were dismissing kids until 4:35! Some parents had been waiting in the car for over an hour.

I left as soon as a could. my classroom was a mess because the kids just left all of their papers and backpacks whereever they were!