Where there's smoke.

"Attention teachers: please disregard the fire alarm. We are testing the alarm system."

I thought the alarm would go of for a second or two, then stop. I thought this might be a recurring theme throughout the morning. I knew it would be disruptive, but let's be honest-- it's the first day back at school after a 3 day weekend, with 18 days of school left. How much is there to disrupt?

The alarm went off, and my students were actually relatively calm. They had heard the announcement, too, and for some reason decided they'd be chill today. But then the alarm kept going off. And it kept going off. 15 minutes later, the fire alarm was still going off. It was still a test. Nobody left their classrooms, much less the building.

Later, I went downstairs to pick my kids up for lunch, and the entire first floor of our building was filled with smoke. It seemed to be coming from the cafeteria, but I coughed all the way down the hallway. I'm talking THICK smoke. And yet, somehow, the smoke detectors that had been so meticulously tested managed to not go off. Amazing.

As a side note--

We're doing an astronomy unit in science right now. Today, we learned about constellations. As an extension, I had my students choose a constellation that reminded them of an animal or ojbect and then write a myth about how the constellation ended up in the sky. One of my students wasn't paying attention while I explained the assignment, she just saw "Your Constellation: __________________" on the handout. I overheard her flipping out because she couldn't find "her" constellation (Sagitarius) on the map. An excellent example of when a little knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge.