Raid

So there I was, doing my teaching thing with an unusual lightness. I had done more prep than usual, had found cute Halloween themed Math worksheets for my kids. I even kind of liked them at that moment. When my boss barrels into my room and announces that he wanted to take all the kids to the library because a crew was here to disinfect the school (because those little swine flu bits like to hide with the spiders and the dust mites and they MUST ALL BE INCINERATED).

Ok, I thought, figuring he meant a couple guys with a heavy duty mop or whatever. Nope. They shut us up in the tiny library - the entire school - and proceeded to hose down our school with disinfectant chemical spray. The kids were coughing, our eyes were watering, my head starting pounding, and no windows were opened. The girls and I could not believe what had just happened. We finally convinced him to take the kids to the park only after he was informed by the crew that they would be taking far longer than he expected. Any time any of us English teachers tried to voice our horror over the fact that he had just sprayed down a schoolful of kids all he would say was "They say it's perfectly safe."

So we went to the park, and lost most of the day in the process. Not that I was complaining. It was a beautiful day, and the kids are at their best when they can run around (which they have tragically few opportunities to do in this uptight, claustrophobic, cutthroat-competitive academic culture). Meanwhile our cramped, windowless school steeped in chemicals. We went back at the end of lunch, and proceeded to be fed food that had been in that building the whole time. Yum, cancer.