Lockdown with kindergartners

When I got the call to substitute teach a kindergarten class, I was eager to accept. What better place to start than with the littlest kids in the school? I thought. I'm pretty sure I can take any kindergartner and at that age, they don't even know about spitballs.

But that was before I ended up being in lock down - a code gray with a class full of 5 and 6-year-olds for 20 minutes.

It turns out that not only was this my first day ever substitute teaching but it was also the day the school would practice "code gray": their procedure for what to do if something unthinkable happens and someone comes into the school with an AK47. I applaud this idea of preparing students, truly I do. We think it can't happen here but that's what everybody thinks until it does. But applauding it and carrying it out with two little kids are two different things.

The principal asked a first grade teacher to put the kids through the procedure, seeing as I was a newbie. The first grade teacher started out well. She told the kids that we would have something like a fire drill and that we would practice what to do if there was an emergency. "Say there's a dog in the school," she said. "A mean dog or a nice dog?" one little boy asked. "A mean dog," she replied," and the dog is loose. We have to practice what to do." Then she had the kids practice "squishing" themselves on one side of the room to get ready for our drill.

Well, the rest of the day the kids wanted to know where the dog was and when it was coming. They said that they didn't see the dog but they wanted to see it. They wanted to know when we were going to have a dog drill.

Finally, I sat them down with another teacher to try again. "There's no dog," I told them. They looked up at me, bewildered. "There's no dog. It's just pretend. Just like when you have a fire drill. Do you see a fire in the halls?" They shook their heads. "We're pretending to get ready for an emergency like a dog in the hallways but the dog was pretend. There's no dog."

We waited and waited for the drill and finally the announcement came and we herded about 15 small children into a small area to wait. "Why are we doing this?" one of the boys whispered. "I don't understand why we're doing this for a dog," another boy said softly. "I think I see a dog," another boy said. Troublemaker. "You don't see a dog," I whispered back. "There's no dog. It's pretend."

Twenty minutes later the children were fidgeting, lying on the floor and trying to climb into the cabinets. There was giggling and poking, all the things you would expect from a bunch of kindergartners trying to sit still. Finally, the announcement came that the code was over.

"Where was the dog? We never saw the dog!" said another little girl in a pink dress. Groan.

Maybe we can have a full out evacuation on my second day. It has to be an improvement.