And so we waited.

Friday morning, it rained and it poured.

It huffed and puffed and nearly blew the school down.

Actually, that's an exaggeration.

There was very little wind.

But it did bucket down rain.

It was also a full moon.

We all thought it was gonna be a day.

Then, as I was pulling into the parking lot at 7:10 a.m., I got a text.

It said the power is out at the high school so come in the front door.

And the power should be back on by 9:00 so we will use our late start schedule.

Oh, hell.

There are a few areas of the building with enough natural light not to be totally hazardous.

A few, none of them hallways.

Which we all found out as we used flashlights and cell phones to navigate to our classrooms and drop off our stuff.


My personal hope was that the power would be on much earlier.

I had a ton of grading I couldn't do in the dark.

Instead, we all gathered near the doors students use in the morning.

Not to let them in out of the downpour.

Nope. Our job was to send them to the far end of the building to enter near the cafeteria and gym.

Of course, many kids who do not ride the bus didn't get notified in time about the schedule change.

It sucked.

Not because of the rain.

Not even because of the power outage.

It sucked to keep kids out in the deluge a bit longer.

It also made sense.

Teenagers, dark hallways, minimal supervision.

Yup, stay in the rain younguns, its for your own good.

And so we waited.

We waited for the power.

We waited for the crazy.

We waited for the whining, complaining, and general grumpiness.

We waited for angry phone calls.

We waited for masses of students to stay home.

We waited in vain.

The power did return...at 9:07, literally minutes before the first bus arrived.

Many were hoping the power would stay off.

A sentiment I totally understand but can't quite share.

I hate attending school in June.

Making up a day in June because it was raining just feels wrong somehow.

There was already a plan to get students back home.

The buses dropping them off would stay on the property.

That way, we could reload them and send right back again.

At the last possible moment the power finally returned.

I expected the day to be hectic, crazy, unsettled, whiny.

It wasn't.

Not only were the kids calm and cooperative, attendance was fine.

I maybe had two more kiddos missing one hour.

My second, third, and fifth hours had perfect attendance.

Not just everyone present, but present and on time.

No one fought the work either.

I was so proud of our student body as a whole.

I actually gave every student in my classes a DREAM ticket (our school currency for good behavior) just for showing up and being normal.

The power went out and it was a good day anyway.

How could that not be a good thing?