The strangest thing...

Tyler has this habit of telling everyone in the class that there is a fire outside on smoggy and otherwise "grey" days... I think that she likes the excitement it causes, and figures that there's no harm in saying something like that. When she says it all my students run to the windows looking for a fire and of course there's just a grey-looking sky. Then we all have to take some time to settle back down, but this is a continuation of behavior from last year, so it's no surprise when it happens. I recently spoke with Tyler about doing this, and she agreed that it was not a good choice to be making, and since our conversation she hadn't said anything about fires... until today.

The rest of the class had heard her cry wolf so many times that even they ignored her when she raised her hand to say "look Ms. G, there's a fire outside!" I didn't even really respond to her when she said it, I just gave her that teacher look that says 'common now, nock it off', but then Tay said "Ms. G, look, Tyler's right! There's a fire outside!" Sure enough, a few blocks down the street a building was on fire, and smoke was rising into the sky so heavily that the sky looked grey. We are on the 4th floor of a very old building, putting us high enough into the air to see most of Newark. What a strange sight... a few minutes later we started to hear sirens and see fire engines roll down the streets... it was just the strangest thing.