180: Day 13: How a fire drill should be run

All schools need to run fire drills to comply with local laws, and to practice ‘just in case’ (when I as at Berkeley HS, we did have a ‘case’). Some do it well, others not so well. Today was a drill at my new school, Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, and I would give my school an A (OK, maybe a B+ if I’m not grade-inflating). Here’s what I liked:

Each classroom has a packet attached with Velcro to the wall near the exit door. This has everything a teacher might need in case of an emergency, including a pencil to take roll.
We walk out to the practice field (only 60 yards long, but that’s the largest space we have near school). This involves crossing busy San Francisco streets, on steep hills.
When we got there, teachers just pull out their class number from their packet, and wait for their students to gather.
Someone from the office walks by and brings us our class lists.
We take attendance, after which someone walks by and picks it up.
We hang out with the kids for a while, then are dismissed by groups and through different gates so as to minimize crowding on sidewalks and while crossing the streets.
When we get back to class, we hear an announcement that the drill took longer than expected, so our 55 minute lunch is being cut by ten minutes. I like this–while the period between break and lunch is a bit shorter, it’s not as short as if they had not taken this time out of lunch.

Thanks to everyone at my school for such a well-run fire drill 🙂