F-I-R-E...

...now say each letter sound and then blend them together to form a word. What does the word say? Yes, that's right...fire!

Today I went to a workshop regarding phonemic awareness and alphabetic principle. Those are just fancy words for learning about sounds and letters! I was a little intimidated at first when we were each given a sheet of words which we were supposed to define: phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, grapheme, phoneme, onset, rime, continuant consonants, and segmentation. These words looked vaguely familiar but its been awhile since I had a class on all this terminology! Thankfully, the words were then defined for me so I didn't feel completely clueless! Honestly, there are simple explanations for each word...they just have to make it look complicated in order for teachers to sound smart! :)

The workshop was very beneficial for me as a kindergarten teacher. I just wish that this workshop had happened at the BEGINNING of the school year my FIRST year teaching instead of at the end of my 2nd year, but oh well!! I was definitely one of the "newbies" there and was just awed by all the instructor was sharing about ways to help children learn. It made me feel like I was doing absolutely nothing to help my own kids learn to read. At first, I felt rather overwhelmed, but then I reminded myself that this was an opportunity to learn NEW things and not to critique and analyze everything I was doing WRONG! Of course, I was coming from a different kind of background than all the other teachers there - being that I teach in a private Christian school and only have 3 students, but a lot of it still applied to me! :)

Anyway, you may be wondering why I chose the word fire as the title word. Well, let me just tell you then and not keep you in suspense! Lunch was provided for those in this workshop, and I definitely enjoyed the yummy tacos, salad and dessert! We had finished up lunch and were listening intently to our instructor as she talked about the wonders of phoneme segmentation (basically breaking up the sounds in each word!). Suddenly, we hear one of the ladies say, "There's a fire in the hallway!" At first we were like, oooookay, because she really didn't sound panicky. I was busy writing something down so I was not really listening. Then one of the other ladies went out in the hallway to check and came running back in. There really was a fire out there! Apparently, the heating system underneath the taco meat (you know, the little candle things caterers use to keep their food hot) apparently got a bit too heated and set the taco tray on fire! It then spread to the basket of chips setting nearby. So we all scrambled up from our seats, grabbed our belongings and scooted out into the smoky hallway. By the time I got out there, one of the ladies from the workshop had grabbed a fire extinguisher nearby and put the fire out. The entire place was thick with smoke. We all found it quite disturbing that the fire alarms didn't go off until AFTER the lady had put the fire out. We were all just standing there, but then decided that we should probably go outside instead of just breathing in the smoke fumes! Yikes, were those fire alarms loud ...just a bit on the delayed side!

We all got safely outside, and found that it was rather chilly in the great outdoors. I had only brought a jean jacket today thinking that the spring breezes would surely be present. Of course, today of all days, they weren't. We soon heard the fire alarm sound at the nearby fire department. A guy then told us that we should probably just go wait in our cars to keep warm because it was probably going to be awhile till we could re-enter the building.

As I was heading to my car, I saw a small red truck with flashers on top pull up to the front of the building. A man dressed like a fireman came out and then went inside. I commented to another lady, "Awww, we only get this little truck?! I was at least hoping for a REAL firetruck to show up!" (I am still in Fireproof mode, sorry :))

Shortly, after I got in my car, I noticed that a real firetruck was coming in the driveway, sirens blasting, flashers flashing. I was happy, although I did feel bad that they really weren't needed seeing how the fire was already out! As I sat in the car texting and talking on my cellphone, ANOTHER firetruck arrived. I found this quite amusing! By this point we had 2 firetrucks and 2 mini trucks there. As if this weren't enough, about five minutes later, a THIRD firetruck pulled in. I was flabbergasted! 3 firetrucks, 2 mini trucks, and who knows how many firemen all there to fight.....smoke. Well, I guess they didn't know what they were going to find so they had to be prepared! :) All it took was a few large fans in the hallways to get the smoke fumes out, and then we were all good to go.

So about 30 minutes after the first official cry of "FIRE!" we were back in the classroom, shaking our heads in bewilderment at what had just taken place. Our instructor was like, "Every time I do a workshop, we always have a cold lunch of sandwiches or something like that. I was all excited about having a hot lunch this time. Well, NEVER again!!!" :)

The Lord was definitely protecting us though. There we all were sitting in the classroom, a fire burning a few feet away and none of us had smelled any smoke! If there hadn't been a lady walking by at that moment, who knows how out of hand the fire could have gotten. That hallway was the only real exit we had out of the building. We eventually found out that there was indeed another exit, but it was through the private offices that we had to press a buzzer to get access in! Who knows if that would have even worked had all those office people ran out of the building! So it was neat to see the Lord's hand of protection.

And yes, it was also neat to see 3 firetrucks all in the same day even though they were not really needed. :) Firemen are my heroes!