The Day the Power Went Out

Story time!

T'was the end of the day and I had just finished filling in my grade 7 class's homeroom teacher what we did that day and ventured upstairs to the staff room (because I'm on staff room clean up this month) when all of a sudden I hear just a bunch of screams from the hall.  I also heard teachers so I assumed it was somewhat under control... which is when I ventured outside of the staff room only to realize that the power in the entire school had gone out.  The staff room is on the 2nd floor and the lights were already out in there because the windows let in enough light so I hadn't even noticed. 

Eventually I ventured down to the main floor which is where my classroom is and notice the hallway my room is down is very dark.  Students are using their cell phone flashlights to help them find their stuff in the lockers and not bump into each other (it's a fairly narrow hallway).  Despite all of this it was likely one of the more orderly locker breaks for that hallway... I didn't hear anyone screaming (and yes, I usually do).  I even had one student ask if it was alright that they had their cell phone out to use as a flashlight (because they aren't allowed cell phones).

Anyways, without power there wasn't much I could do at school (my marking was already done) so I took the opportunity to leave pretty well right after school.  I don't live far from school but I do live about 5 or 6 traffic lights from school... and unfortunately half of the traffic lights were out which meant my commute home likely tripled the time it took.

It turns out we were lucky it happened at the very end of the day... I know a couple of people that live in the area and their power wasn't restored for about 6 hours.

Funny enough this isn't the first time this has happened to me.  A number of years ago I was subbing at another school in the area and at the end of the day the power had gone out in the entire school.  The same thing happened there too... everyone was screaming in the halls.  Because apparently when you use power it is definitely something to scream about.