Fire! There was a fire today because someone lit a bulletin board on fire. The whole school smelled of smoke and the poor board was charred to pieces, little remnants of border paper clinging to the edges of the frame, or drooping to the floor in a defeated sigh. They struck me suddenly as tragic, these brightly lit facades coating a dark place with pastel colors promoting hope where there is nothing but despair.

Ok, fine. It was "just a bulletin board," but it means someone was willing to set paper on fire and wasn't too worried about the rest of us in the building. It was real. And just a little creepy.

Fire alarms on the other hand, are as common as curse words and as such we have all learned to disregard them. I rarely notice the blinking lights or hear the glaring beeps. They go off at least twice a day, sometimes more. The danger with this "selective hearing" is of course the story of the boy who cried wolf. I was so sure that this fire alarm was just another kid pulling the lever and like everyone else, I told my class to keep working. It wasn't until security came around saying that it was real that I got the kids to calmly exit. We are four flights of stairs up and had the fire spread, our futures might not have looked so bright. Or they would have looked really bright for a few seconds and then...well, extinguished. Our evacuation time as a campus was abysmal because no one believed it was real.

Someday, there will be a serious fire and people will get killed but until that happens, procedures will continue as they did today with a little "reminder" from the administration on the importance of exiting the building, crossing the street to get out of the way of the fire trucks and to do the best to stick with your class of kids, count 'em, and walk them back inside when it is all over.

It's enough to make me want to teach in the 'burbs.