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Monday, October 12, 2015

Unintended Consequences...



It was "SAFETY" day at the country club elementary school. The school distributed to all 350+ students a personal-emergency combination "whistle & signal light" key fob. The school's instruction to the kids was use them only to summon help in case of emergency.  

They were handed out to all students during the first hour of class time.

You can guess what happened. A kid with a whistle can't resist the urge to make noise. Make that 350+ kids and you would have thought that "the big one" earthquake happened during a mass kidnapping at the first recess. Even a school wide, loudspeaker broadcast instructing the kids to "knock it off" and repeated instruction what an emergency is went ignored.

I'm sure the parents picking up kids gleefully blasting whistles as they hopped into the back seat really appreciated the school's attention to the safety of their children.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It makes you wonder if the administration is even familiar with children and their behavior.

Unknown said...

I love these moments in teaching, when you realise you have just shot yourself in the foot but the avalanche has already started so all you can do is vainly try and recover. It helps you laugh at yourself. However this is on a grand scale - an amazing moment where OH&S type bureaucracy has overtaken reason and practicality.

Unknown said...

These are the funniest moments about teaching. This is a slap in the face to idiotic bureaucratic processes which plague the practical functioning of organisations. Teach kids to scream if in danger?

D. Morin said...

Wow, this makes you wonder if any of the administration had ever been a teacher because, seriously, what were they thinking? Too bad the 'whistle & signal light' key fobs hadn't been placed in teachers' boxes for staff to hand out at the end of the day! Something similar happened to me a few years back - a parent had included noisemakers w/the cupcakes to hand out at party time. I handed out the toys as students exited that day...and the birthday child thought that was a good idea!