Details, Details

Here is why fire drills are like the SAT's:

For all the worth that people attach to them, SAT's primarily test one thing: how well a person can take the SAT's.

Today, I learned that fire drills also primarily test one thing: How quickly and efficiently a school can be evacuated in case of a fire drill.

Fire drills do very little to prepare the students for evacuation in case of an actual fire or emergency. And why is that, you ask? Am I saying that schools should not have fire drills, you ask? Well, preferably not during my lunch break, but I digress. Fire drills could and should prepare students to evacuate the building in a smooth and efficient way should there happen to be an actual emergency - but that doesn't quite work when the unexpected sounding of the fire alarm leads the school administration to conclude that this is not a scheduled fire drill, so therefore students should stay in their classrooms.

Excuse me?

Does this mean students can only evacuate the school in cases of planned emergencies?

Can you tell that there was a bit of confusion today in one of the schools where I work?

Basically, the alarm went off. Students started to evacuate. Then, maybe there was an announcement or maybe there wasn't, but teachers were told to return students to their classrooms - because this was not a fire drill. It took at least another few minutes for someone to get on the PA system and announce that this should be treated "like a fire drill."

We then stood outside for 20 minutes while the fire trucks came, the fire fighters looked around and confirmed that there was, indeed, no fire, and climbed back into their trucks and headed out.

Now doesn't that just inspire confidence in the ability of the school administration to handle emergency situations? "Oops, we didn't plan this. So it must be a false alarm."

In other words, I had an interesting lunch break.

Oh, and on the way home, I stopped at a school book sale. Hooray for $1 books. Yes, I came home with another bagful of children's literature. It just isn't safe to put me in a room with $1 children's books... my friends will have to be extra vigilant this Sunday (when there will be not one, but two book sales in my neighborhood!)