Fire drills

I've described the countless ways in which valuable educational time gets wasted on a daily basis in a public high school. Between the pointless movies and the mindless busywork and teachers writing website columns instead of actually teaching, it's a wonder the kids learn anything. I plead guilty to all of the above, as well as to wasting taxpayer funded instructional time telling kids long-winded, highly embellished stories from my past that have no real connection to what I'm trying to teach. It's just that some days I get as bored as the kids, so I have to do something to break up the monotony of trying to teach functionally illiterate 10th graders the vital life skill of how to identify the correct tone in some saccharine sweet borefest piece of supposedly uplifting bullshit literature that a group a gray-haired white women decided was appropriate reading material for the No Child Left Behind mandated state test. ("Oh Marge, let's include this story about the little blonde girl and the snow goose, and then we can write eight questions about tone, theme and modifiers.") But railing against NCLB is a topic best left to smarter teachers who possess the eloquence and intelligence to shred what might be the most hilarious piece of legislation ever passed.

While I concede that I have the power to stop wasting so much class time with movies, stories, handouts and jokes, there is one educational time-waster over which I have no control. According to some law that was enacted to help protect children, we must set aside a few minutes of the school day once a month to undertake this activity. No, I do not allude to the Pledge of Allegiance, which is no longer required due to the heroic efforts of America's greatest institution, the ACLU, bless them one and all. I never say the Pledge, and I certainly don't require my kids to say it. I don't even require them to stand. In fact, I do all I can to discourage kids from even listening to this mindless bit of rah-rah jingoism, because it leads mainly to a lot of the poorer and dumber kid signing up to go fight in whatever current needless war the military-industrial complex has conjured up in order to increase profits.

Now, if they had an "Oath of Good Citizenship," well, I'd be standing up and saying that at full volume, encouraging the kids to join along and believing in every sentiment. It could include wording along the lines of "... I will pay my taxes ... I will take care of any kids I make ... I will keep all mention of religion out of the public discourse ... I'll obey the laws ... I won't give a rat's ass if a man wants to suck another man's cock ... I won't vote for IQ-challenged sons of ex-presidents ..." Okay, so maybe I wouldn't be the one to write it, but you get my drift. But having kids pledge blind allegiance to a nation that routinely sends kids to die in bullshit wars? Not on my watch, Mr. Principal. Instead, while some earnest future valedictorian pads her sickeningly bloated high school resume by leading the daily pledge on the televised daily announcements, I bring up sports, or the latest movie, or pussy, or anything to keep the kids from staring at the flag and thinking how rewarding it might be to sign on the dotted line so that they can be all they can be, which is too often just a helpless human target to some whacked out angry Sunni with too many explosives and not enough access to porn to help quell that suicidal anger.

No, the state-mandated time-waster I'm talking about is the Fire Drill, an always welcome seven-minute respite for kids and teachers alike. Hearing the fire alarm is a lot like turning on the TV and hearing that another Paris Hilton porno tape has surfaced, an unlooked for but welcome treat that makes your day just a little bit better. I was going to say it's a lot like seeing a stray tit pop out of a shirt during a lunchtime chick fight, but I've seen that too many times, and it's never a welcome sight.

I understand the need for fire drills. I just know that, should the halls ever fill with actual smoke from an actual fire, we would not see the orderly exit procession we see during the drills. The slower children would be overrun, the weak would be knocked aside and the retarded kids would be trampled. And that's just by me. I'll gladly stay after school to help a kid with his comma placement, but if I get a whiff of smoke during a fire drill, I guarantee that I'll be the first one out the door, and 25 kids will have my shoeprint on the backs of their shirts. Our school is located near Washington, D.C., and when the D.C. sniper was terrorizing the area for a month, I made sure that five or six kids closely surrounded me when we had fire drills. They thought I was being a funny guy and gladly obliged. I thought I was being smart and safe.

Fortunately, in 20 odd years of teaching, we've never actually had a fire at our school, just one measly bomb threat and another bomb "scare," which I will describe later. Of course, when the bomb threat was called in, the secretary, being a secretary, immediately followed the proper procedures, and the building was emptied. Had I answered the phone, I'd have told the little fucker to stop wasting my time, and if he was going to blow up the school, go ahead and do it and save us all the pain of sitting through the last three periods of the day. Even in my high school days, we had only one real fire. When I was in ninth grade, some well-meaning arsonist, who still has my undying gratitude, set fire to something in a stairway in our school, resulting in the building being filled with smoke and the school population standing outside on a miserably rainy February day until they finally sent us all home. We even got the next day off, which increased my already sizable debt to my beloved unknown firestarter. I hated high school almost as much as I hate teaching, so an unscheduled day and a half off was like finding ... well, yet another Paris Hilton tape.

Most fire drills take place during the last two periods of the day, and for that I am always embarrassingly grateful to the administration. Any teacher will tell you that the last two periods of the day are the worst classes. It doesn't matter what quality of student you teach during those periods. If you have the dumb kids, you are dealing with a class full of angry kids who have spent the first six periods being reminded of the fact that school is set up to take absolutely no advantage of the types of intelligence they might have. By late afternoon, they are tired, angry, defeated and ready to kick some teacher ass. They've been mentally pushed around all day, and by seventh period, they're aching to push back, and push back they do. Hard. So seven minutes of standing outside is a goddamn godsend to any teacher with a class full of non-reading mouth-breathers.

If you are lucky enough to teach the smart kids, you still love the fire drill, unless you're one of those teachers, which I'll describe in a minute. By this point of the day, the brainiacs are certain that they do indeed know everything, and that you, the - "pshaww" - teacher, have nothing of value to offer, as their day so far has been spent completing easy handouts that require virtually no real thought or higher level thinking, leading them to believe that they are ready for Harvard and the ensuing cushy office job compliments of the old boy network they hope to join. The seven or so minutes you get to spend outside is seven fewer minutes that you'll have to endure sneers, rolled eyes and an endless stream of "tsks" from these self-satisfied delusional humps whose parents sport bumper stickers proudly proclaiming that they have a kid who sucks teacher ass at some overrated public high school.

The mass exit in a fire drill always runs smoothly, which is no surprise, because every goddamn human in the building possesses the natural instinct to escape not only fire but also the unnatural world that is high school. Because the fire drills are planned, you can always count on the weather being nice, so you're never standing in rain, snow, sleet or tornado. The kids get to relax and talk, and the teachers are supposed to take attendance and turn in the names of any missing students to the frantic self-important secretary running around the parking lot snagging the lists. I can state without an ounce of exaggeration that in 20 years I have never taken a true class count during a fire drill. I simply write my name, the period, and "All Present" on the sheet, and then I send some teaching-pleasing hump of a kid to run it over to the oh-so-important Collector of the Forms. Then I'm free to enjoy a stress-free seven minutes of sunny day. Should a real fire ever occur, I know they are not going to read every attendance form, then note who is missing, then run into the building looking for the missing kids. We know the missing kids are outside walking around somewhere, and if by chance they are still in the burning school getting grilled to a toasty crisp, then that's just one more example that the Biology teacher can use as a teachable moment when she goes over Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest. "You see kids, the stupidest people used to get eaten by saber toothed tigers. Now they burn up in school fires."

Of course, the self-important real teachers just hate fire drills, because it takes a few precious minutes away from whatever vital content they are teaching that day. While the rest of us are enjoying our brief reprieve, they can be seen pacing and checking their watches and even throwing back their heads in disgust, just in case anyone missed their other dramatic gestures. The hotshot math teacher will grumble to whomever is nearby that, because of this darn fire drill and the seven lost minutes of prime instructional time, now her kids will never be on the team of engineers that builds that first trans-Atlantic bridge, and because of this daggum fire drill, we'll all have to keep boating and flying to Europe.

Other teachers complain, but it's just for show. They secretly love the short break. Then you have the small group of openly ecstatic ramrods like me, who high five the kids and scan the building in hopes of seeing flames shooting out of the roof.

The only time we had an actual emergency happened about eight or nine years ago. The fire alarm went off during eighth period, which just happened to be my free period. I was sitting at my computer with my doors closed and the lights off in order to keep any class-cutting students from popping in to say hi and to ask if they could hang in my room. (Because sometimes I say yes, depending on the kid. I will factor in certain criteria before agreeing, criteria such as what class the kid is skipping, how personable the kid is and tit size.) Instead of going outside, which we are all required to do by law, I just hid in my room at my computer. However, after 15 minutes, I began to wonder why no one had returned to the building. I knew that there must be some real issue transpiring upstairs. Perhaps a fire was raging through the cafeteria. Maybe bullet-ridden students and teachers (and hopefully the bitchy librarian) were strewn throughout the building, and the scene outside was a chaotic screamfest with tears and wailing worthy of Al Pacino overacting in yet another pathetic attempt to grab his second Oscar.

I finally walked out the doors and up the steps, as my room was located in the dungeon area of the school in those days. I'm a pretty funny teacher, but I never received a laugh like I did that day. Every kid who saw me emerge from the building 15 minutes after the start of the fire drill damn near fell to the ground in hysterics. I just sauntered out to the cheering crowd, then did a full bow. In retrospect, I'm sure this would not be so funny had the school been filled with dead kids. Thankfully, that was not the case. (Well, a dead librarian might have been a little funny.)

The cause of the long delay, we finally learned, was that a teacher had heard a ticking in her desk and assumed it was - I kid you not - a bomb. This teacher was not very well liked, and even less intelligent, so she actually believed that someone might be trying to blow her up. So she shooshed the kids out of her room and contacted the office. Two principals came to the room, and, using their crack auditory skills, confirmed the ticking. They refrained from just opening the desk, because they knew that this teacher was the type of person who would report this lack of proper "what-to-do-when-you-hear-a-strange-ticking-sound-in-your-desk" procedure and perhaps get the principals severely reprimanded. I'm sure they knew good and goddamned well that bombs tick only in James Bond movies, but since Sean Connery was off in Hollywood no doubt chewing the scenery and overdoing his exaggerated Scottish accent, they had no choice but to empty the building and call in the bomb squad, the nearest unit of which was located over 30 miles away. The kids were getting a bit restless at this point, standing outside on a blustery March day, but the helicopter finally arrived and took their attention away from grabbing girls' asses and beating the shit out of each other. The helicopter, which contained the bomb squad, landed on the football field, and out stepped two men in bomb squad suits, the kind of suits that made them look like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. They made their way into the building to cheers from the antsy-as-hell and no doubt hoping-for-an-explosion-students. (And, okay ... teachers.) Finally, the buses arrived at their normal time, and the kids were sent home without being allowed back into the building or to wait and see if someone got blown up. Teachers were given the option of going home without returning to their rooms, or waiting around outside in hopes of hearing a mega-blast and seeing pieces of well padded bomb squad limbs flying out of the brand new hole in the roof. I stayed and hoped for the worst. Like I said earlier, I bore easily in this job.

The bomb guys opened the desk drawer very carefully, I'm guessing, but they found no bomb. Just one of those old Walkman cassette players that had been left running. The teacher who owned the desk had a son who went to this school, and he dropped his Walkman - still playing a tape - into his mom's desk before heading to lunch. Instead of automatically shutting off, the Walkman got stuck at the end of the tape and kept clicking, which resulted in a steady, ominous ticking sound and 50 wonderful fire drill minutes for the staff and students. What made this moment even richer was that the teacher was the meanest, strictest, most spiteful teacher in the building. Had it not been her son, she would have orchestrated a second March on Selma in an attempt to get this kid expelled for his innocent gaffe. This woman would jump through every hoop available to get a kid suspended, expelled or at least failed. Instead, she just laughed it off, but I know she was mortified, and that pleased me greatly.

And something else good came out of this. The Biology teacher was provided with yet another teachable moment. She got to say, "You see kids, the stupidest people used to get eaten by saber toothed tigers. Now they become too easily panicked teachers with dumbass kids who can't even operate a Walkman."

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.