I want to take you to my 6th Grade classroom at 9.30am Tuesday 28th January 2014. The first few flurries were floating past the second floor window. The students excitement level was completely off the chart. There is something in the senses of pre-teens where meteorological events are concerned. They can smell snow quicker than adults and impending doom seems to be a sixth sense. We were studying a geography case study on the eruption of Mount Pinatubo where the students' were taking on the roles of citizens, Air force base personal and volcanologists. They are making a website that timelines the events leading up to the main eruption on the 15th June, 1991 and reads like a newspaper, interviewing these stakeholders - and also considering communication in 1991! As I looked out the window as the students' were compiling their timelines, I made the following comment;
"So consider where the volcanologists were at - put yourself in the shoes of Mr. Glass (our school headmaster) right now at this moment. Should he cancel school?... (students look up from screens - visible excitement on their faces)... but if he does that and it does not snow, he has to deal with upset parents that had their day disrupted. But if he does not make the call, there could be many of us doing our homework together this evening!"
Class ended and at 7pm as I sat with a couple of the same 6th Graders showing me some of the games that they play on their computers, I wanted to eat the latter words. Mind you, I cannot wait until class next week - talk about a learning moment. They will all have their stories (their blogs will be interesting!) and already I'm getting emails reminding me of that conversation - and they empathize with volcanologists in 1991 that found it difficult to give the order evacuate the areas around the volcano based on the evidence that they had in the same way as our officials and school leaders had difficulty making the call based on the meteorological evidence that they had. Perhaps I should call a press conference with Mayor Reid and my 6th Graders - he would enjoy their level of thinking for sure!