Out of Power, But Not Out of Energy

It has been a very interesting day... We had a wicked thunderstorm last night (Praise God!) that caused a lot of chaos in my life for multiple reasons. First of all, it woke me up at 1 in the morning after I had been asleep for 4 hours (yes, I was asleep by 9 pm) when the thunder vibrated my apartment so much that the light fixture in my half bathroom fell off and shattered. Then I get to school that morning and see the electric company working on the lines outside our building. I walk in and the classrooms still have electricity but the hallways are dark. Then I find out that they're turning off all the electricity to the entire building so that they can work on the lines. I hurry to sign in and then my principal instructs us to get all the kids to the East cafeteria (which has walls of windows). Every child that got to school for breakfast (Headstart through 4th grade) was in one cafeteria that usually is for 2nd through 4th grade. It was hot because there was no air conditioning and there were a lot of panicking children who either couldn't find their teacher or couldn't find a place to sit to eat their breakfast. After I got most of my kids rallied, we went outside to get some fresh air before going on to our classroom. My classroom is on the side of the building that has windows, so we could see enough to continue on with our day to some extent. The teachers that have no windows had to stay outside and "entertain" their students for a couple of hours until the electricity was restored. My students were working very well in the dark, but I could tell they were getting restless, so we went for a "nature walk" with a couple of the other 1st grade classes. They were very excited about all the fresh air. By the time we got back, the lights started coming back on, so we headed back to our classroom after a quick juice break. Little did I know that my students' restlessness had not gone away with our walk... It was the 1st rough day of the year lol

Later on... As I was reminding my class every few seconds of our rules while working independently, I was giving out Bobcat Bucks (our positive behavior reward). One of my students that is very outspoken and without much of a filtering system, said, "Miss Glover, you're going crazy!" I asked him, "Now why do you say that?" He so plainly replied, "You're giving out Bobcat Bucks like crazy!" I then told him that I could easily go put them away if he thought that would be a solution to my craziness. He waved a hand at me and said, "No, no, no, don't do that! That's not what I meant!" It was very funny and he quickly realized that Miss Glover is a little quicker than he might have realized... He may have met his match this year... We hope! :)

Maybe tomorrow will be a normal day... but never expect too much normalcy when working with 1st graders!