Just a Hot Mess

It's been a long week. With parent teacher conferences happening everyday. To being at work for 12 hours for the past four days.To having to hunt down parents in back alleys and chase them down to the corner of a random street to get their signature for their child's report card. Because they dont show up for the appointment time that THEY chose according to THEIR schedule. And yeah the student that stole from me? Yup, did it four times within the past three weeks. Suspension does nothing for him. Lovely, isn't it???

I'm just tired. I want to sleep. And I want to sit and do nothing.

Everyone's so crabby. And in a bad mood. Or in a funk. Or just aloof. I dont know how else to describe it. Except to say that everybody and their mama is acting like a hot mess. And has been for the past week.

As the day continued to drag on and on, I asked K, my other first grade team member, if we, all 83 first graders, and four teachers, could come into her room and practice singing "Never Say Never" by Justin Bieber and rehearse for our awards ceremony that was to commence at 9 a.m. tomorrow. So we all huddled in her room at the very end of the day, sang that song a million and one times. I'm so sick of it. Anyways, we still had ten minutes to go till it was "ok" for us to start getting ready for dismissal.

Whatevs.

So I gather all my children and trudge back ,grudgingly, to my classroom, and put on random songs for them to sing and just call it a day. I send them out to their lockers ten minutes earlier then I should have and we were ready to go. Since we were so early, I decided to put this on. It's so fun to watch them do it.

So the whole class gets into it, and I dont even realize that the entire first grade hallway is deserted and abandoned.I walk out into the hallway and wonder why the heck the lockers are not being opened and slammed as they normally are. And then I see that K's classroom blind is down, walk over to her door, pull the handle and it's locked. Bang on the door. No one answers. Seems like no one is even in there. Look over to her neighboring class, and same thing.

WEIRDDDDD.

Then my mind finally registers EVERYTHING and I realize that the entire SCHOOL is on LOCKDOWN. Meaning no one can come in or OUT of the building. I didnt know if it was a practice drill (kinda weird for them to do it at the end of the day) and I gather all my children once again and command them to hide in the corner of our room. I lock my classroom door, and go hide in the corner with them and admonish anyone that lets out a peep. I also kick myself for never putting a blind up, and not being able to cover the window that is in my doorway. I'm stupid like that.

I text K. And then I text A. And then I text S. WTF is going on? And then they all text me back the same thing. To make a long story short, there was a madman directly outside our school with a gun, that woke up this morning and decided he wanted to go around on a shooting rampage.

Fortunately, the police were able to catch him. And we continued dismissal as normal. And no one was hurt. Thank God.

Kids were OUTSIDE playing for physical education and the gym teacher HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON! I like how no one told me either that we were in lockdown. I like how my kids were in the hallway AND ANYTHING COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO ANY OF US, and NO ONE WARNED US. That just burns me like CRAZY. Like SERIOUSLY? If this is what your procedures are, then get me the heck out of here.

So yeah, everything's just a hot friggin mess everywhere.

P.S. Apparently me and another parent scared the crap out of K. Every time we banged on her door and continuously tried opening it, guess who she thought it was?