The lights went out. The image projected on the board went black.

Then I heard screams.

Chaos ensued. Up and down the hallway, teachers threw open classroom doors to see what was happening. Student faces peeked out behind them. Soon, we learned that the power crew working down the street had accidentally cut the power lines in the neighbourhood. Luckily, my classroom has windows and, even better, I had just handed out new worksheets, so we were golden.

Golden, that is, if you ignored the intermittent screaming from across the hall, often followed by hilarious laughter. The interior classrooms were really very dark, so there was quite a lot of random scream-laughing… after a few minutes, I invited my across-the-hall neighbour and his ELD (English Language Development – for students who did not have the chance to attend much school before they came to Canada) Science class into my Grade 9 English class. More chaos.

If I know anything about school chaos, I know this: students with nothing to do will find something to do pretty quickly. It’s better for everyone if teachers direct that energy before the students do.

Unfortunately, my class had been starting to work with correlative conjunctions and inversion (after a moment last week revealed how deeply they did not understand this – really, the excitement never ends in our classroom). I’d shared “the flip” right before the lights went out.

The story not only hides the truth but also creates fear becomes
Not only does the story hide the truth, but it also creates fear.

Now we’d added half again as many students to the room and their English levels were undetermined. This was, perhaps, not the ideal lesson for the moment. But what are you going to do? The classroom was full of kids and something had to happen. No problem. I caught my colleague’s eye, then quickly grouped the students, pairing two or three English students with one or two Science students.

“Great,” I clapped my hands. “Now, if you’re in my class, you’re going to teach this pattern to your new partners.” Nothing like adding a little academic chaos to the chaos of a power outage. The students stared.

Soon the Science teacher and I were circulating, encouraging students to introduce themselves, to share worksheets, to try something new. Slowly, the magic of students working together across languages and levels started to spread through the classroom. People were laughing and talking and trying to understand each other.

I had just stepped back to take in the somewhat-darkened slightly goofy chaos of learning when a VP came in and told us that school was dismissed early for the day. Everyone understood that, and cheers erupted. Students streamed out of the classroom, and my colleague and I smiled at each other. It had only been 10 minutes, but it had been good.