Terremotitos

In my 17 years of school, today was my first ever not-a-drill evacuation procedure. The kids were transitioning between subjects when I got the feeling our building was swaying a little bit. I looked over at Mitzi and told her I thought we were having an earthquake. The kids looked back and forth between the two of us, and as soon as she started to tell the kids to get under their desks the earthquake alarm went off. The kids ducked and covered pretty quickly, and I reminded them to put their hands over the backs of their necks like we'd practiced. I felt that slight swaying another couple times and my heart pick up a little. Mitzi poked her head out into the hallway to see if we were evacuating, and then we got the kids in line and went down to the field. One of our boys looked pretty pale and one of the girls told me she was scared. I patted her back as we walked down together and assured her it was just a little baby tremor.

Really they were very minor tremors we felt, though at its epicenter 100 miles away the earthquake was a 5.7. However, on January 8 of this year, 20 miles away from us Costa Ricans experienced a 6.1 earthquake which took 34 lives, left 91 injured and 56 missing. Though many of my students were out of town on vacations, they were all very affected by the tragedy. Strangely, earlier today we were talking about the Westmont fire, as it relates to a story we are reading as a class. All of this stuff has generated some fantastic discussions in our class about what really matters most.