Things that go "woof" in the class

Not a terribly eventful week. I subbed for a physics/astronomy teacher at the nearby high school on Monday, a physics/math at another high school on Tuesday, then Spanish at that same school for the rest of the week. This week saw the power of videos if you have an unexpected absence, as I did little more than show videos on Monday (scrounged up by another science teacher), Wednesday, and Thursday. Dull for me, once I saw each one the first time, but at least it allowed me to get a lot of reading done...

There was some excitement Thursday morning, however. It was announced that the school was on a modified lockdown, and no students were allowed to leave class. As it turned out, this was so that a drug-sniffing dog could go around to random rooms and, well, sniff around. And guess what? My Spanish class was randomly (?) chosen. So I got to stop the video and wait out in the breezeway with my class for fifteen or twenty minutes, making sure they weren't using cell phones or the like to contact buddies about what was going on. Kind of exciting, until the novelty wore off. (One student, kidding around, asked if I had anything to worry about, and I mentioned that I had brought coke to school that day...a Coca-Cola in my lunch, of course.) Nobody was taken away once we came back in, so as far as I know my class was clean.

Turns out, however, that that was not the case in the whole school. The next day, I was talking with one of the other Spanish teachers about it, and she told me that there was a lot of resistance among the staff about the dog, as it would disrupt class (understandable, but no worse than a fire drill), and there was no need, as this was a clean-cut, suburban school with good kids and no drug problem. Well, it turned out that that was not entirely the case, as a handful of students were indeed found in possession of drugs or paraphanalia, and even a weapon. A few were expelled that day, and several others were going to be questioned later. Obvioously, this was a wake-up call for both the students and staff.

Nothing lined up this week so far except a junior high math class on Tuesday, but I'm sure something will turn up. It usually does.