Sunglasses Always Fit

I’ve been teaching for fifteen years, all ages and subjects, in four different countries, and at a certain point, you kinda think you’ve seen it all. You think you’re prepared for any emergency or strange situation after all the mandatory training and PDs you’ve suffered sat through. You’ve met all kinds of children and adults, learned how to handle people at their best and at their worst. And generally, when something crazy happens on the job, it’s a one-off. It’s a fire starting in the science lab, it’s a kid missing on a field trip found quickly in the bathroom, it’s armed robbers running through the neighborhood forcing a lockdown (this has all happened to me). But not this time. Nope. On Friday we had approximately a hundred one-offs all happening in the span of a few hours. 

For our first full five days with the kids, we naturally scheduled Spirit Week to make it more chaotic. Friday was the culmination – a big day of soccer games between the classes. I managed to get the spelling test done and a little decimal review (by being like, Maleficent levels of mean) and then by 9:30, had given up on any learning happening for the rest of the day and we all sat outside to watch and play soccer. After a truly exciting Staff vs Eighth graders (in which we reigned supreme, thankyouverymuch to the PE teacher) the games were to end with ninth graders versus parents. I love these kinds of things because you always get a few dads who are clearly out there to relive some glory days. 

The whole school was out, cheering and screaming, and the game was pretty evenly matched, with no score. I think we were going to have to go into overtime or something, because there was a break. Suddenly, a bunch of the eighth and ninth grade students started running to the opposite side of the field area, and those of us watching thought some big, fun surprise was going to happen, like the kids were going to pour a cooler of ice over our PE teacher. Then there was this weird lull, and then we realized there was something serious happening. 

A student who had been playing the game had walked away to go to the bathroom and started having a seizure. A friend had noticed he was missing and went looking for him and found him on the ground, hitting his head on cement steps. She screamed for help, but since we were all at the game, no one heard her. Finally my friend Erin heard and went to help and then others came to help stabilize him and call for an ambulance. Luckily, we have a former first responder on staff who was really able to intervene. 

The rest of us tried to keep the students under control and away from the scene as they grew restless. It was also a special pizza day, so Dominoes was trying to come in along with an ambulance. Finally, the student was taken to the hospital and we let the kids go to lunch. As teachers, we gathered in the staff room and ate our own pizza and talked about how wild that was, how we needed better plans in place for this student and any others with health issues. Then we walked off, thinking that was going to be it for the day.

Nope.

About five minutes after I sat down, alone for the first time since 7:30 that morning, my students started coming into the class. “Hey – lunch isn’t over yet, what are you-” I tried to say but they were all in a panic, crying and yelling and pushing to get to me. 

“A tree fell on fourth grade!” they said.

Now. Anyone who has kids or works with kids knows that you have to wade through several layers of questions to get to the truth of anything. But they were upset about something serious and had been told to return to class, so I asked them to all sit down and went to try to ask questions. There were children everywhere outside crying, clutching their arms or legs, hugging their classmates, and teachers trying to herd them away. I looked out on the playground, and guess what? A tree, a really big tree, had fallen on fourth grade.

Right where these kids play soccer, a huge tree had split off from its roots and fallen across the play area. Teachers were crowded around, pulling branches and leading kids away to our lunch area, the palapa, to assess and triage. I could hear one kid screaming and quickly realized this was way more serious than I had thought, and ran to get back to my students. In the class, kids were frantically asking what had happened, trying to tell me what they thought they saw, crying over what they had heard and seen, and asking if they could go check on their siblings and cousins in other classes to make sure they were okay. 

Anxious to reassure them and myself, I went back to see if I recognized any of the students as siblings of my own. The palapa was a little triage area, and I came back to my class, checking in on my neighbors to see if they knew anything. There was no information coming, as our school’s director is off for surgery, one of the admin had just returned from the earlier ambulance for our student with a seizure, everyone was busy. And then, so helpfully, the power and water went out. Turns out the tree had knocked a line down. Later I found out that it was a live wire, dangerous, and right by where our outhouses are, where I’d been sending kids one by one for a little calming break and to wash hands after lunch. 

I could see one of my coworkers literally take her shirt off to provide a bandage for someone under the tree. Our rooms were hot and stuffy, we had no real information, no running water, no Wifi to just put on a movie and distract the kids, and two hours until dismissal when the second ambulance of the day arrived on our campus. 

Our students did a beautiful job trying to comfort each other, crying and hugging and praying for one another while we waited to hear more and tried to stay calm. We talked about how it was okay to be scared, did some breathing together, and waited.

One fourth grader, a brother of one of my students, was crying by the bathroom so my student went to get him. He had been playing goalie and heard and saw the tree starting to fall, and yelled at his friends to get out of the way, but they weren’t fast enough. It fell right in front of him. He cried as he told us he tried to get the branches off his friend, but wasn’t strong enough, and how hard it was to hear his friend screaming for help. We did our best to comfort and reassure him, and I had no rules in the class that afternoon, bringing out all the toys and paints and games donations have provided to try and distract them all. 

We don’t have landlines in our classrooms or an intercom system, and many of the people in charge didn’t have data on their phones, so we were relying on a real-life game of telephone for information, with one of our teachers running from class to class to check on us and let us know of any updates. It was agonizing for teachers and students for a while, not sure who was hurt and how badly and what we should be doing. 

The ambulance took three of the students away with a broken femur, broken collarbone, and some other serious injuries. And we kept it collected until 2:45, when we could release the kids. One of the worst parts was having to let some of my students go home alone, as they normally just walk themselves. Outside, to make it even more strange, was a fumigation team from the government to spray for mosquitos to help deal with the dengue problem here.

When the students were gone and we finally closed the gates, the adrenaline started to come down a bit. It was a “don’t know whether to scream or sleep or laugh or cry” situation about the whole day. In true teacher fashion, a few of us met over beers and started a document to outline the response throughout the day and what we could have done better, which teachers and students needed to be acknowledged for their actions on Monday, and how we could best comfort the school and community. 

It’s amazing to me that the kids were only on that part of the school playground for about thirty minutes the whole day, and that’s when the tree fell. Our friend who has a broken femur made it through surgery successfully, although he needs a blood transfusion today, and he will have a long recovery. But everyone else should heal quickly and we know it could have been so much worse.

Tomorrow will probably be awful and hard and emotional. We had a fundraiser 5/10K run planned for Saturday morning that we had to cancel, counselors have been called in to talk to students and teachers, and we’re having an assembly and debriefing meetings. I’m so impressed with my coworkers who were first responders and made tough decisions quickly. They don’t cover any of this stuff in teacher college. 

At the end of the day on Friday, students were saying they were scared of trees and didn’t want to play outside anymore. They wanted to know why so many bad things had happened. We all process things differently . . . I write and play Candy Crush and on Friday night turned into a few beers and solving all the world’s problems and then suddenly we were doing karaoke . . . so whatever my students need to do, I’m trying to be prepared for it. I’m hoping to find the right words to say before the morning, but I’ll be bringing tissues and hugs and stickers and candy just in case that helps. 

Thank you again for the donations that have been provided . . . they are a welcome distraction that I know will help us ease back into normalcy somehow this week. Now I’m going to crush some candies and take another nap. Take care of yourself and each other.