Masters of Disaster---LIVE!

Hm... Okay, maybe that headline is a bit kitschy even for me, but I couldn't resist. This afternoon we had a tornado warning while we were at school. To help make that a little more understandable: A tornado WATCH means the conditions could possibly produce a tornado, and the National Weather Service is keeping an eye out. A tornado WARNING, however, means that a tornado has been spotted, either on the ground or in the sky near you.
We were puttering around in the classroom, packing things up for the summer. I have one student that enjoys looking at the weather, and often does this if he has the opportunity. He was doing that while I was looking up something for another student, so he leans over to me and points at the scrolling bar on the Weather Channel homepage. And I see it: bright red, scrolling slowly, TORNADO WARNING. He has seen it too, and wants to talk about it, but I needed to stop him so the other students wouldn't get scared. I simply said, "If it was for this area, we would be in the safe room, in the position that we practiced." He nodded, lost interest, and went forward. I can honestly say it wasn't more than 3 minutes later that one of our assistant principals came on the PA system and said, "All instruction will cease." I never thought I would hear those words out of the mouth of a principal! He requested that all students & staff report to their assigned safety locations, and then the school lost all power. Now, our school is a Red Cross shelter site, and has generators (I know this because, 3 years ago, before I ever knew I was teaching at this school, I did the shelter survey... it was one of the first things I did for the Loudoun Chapter!), so the hallways had lights as did some classrooms. We stayed in the room for about an hour, and ultimately dismissed all students by 4:15 p.m.
But, I was very proud of my students... they knew exactly what to do, and although they were scared and had some high-pitched voices going on, they did what they were told to do. I have to attribute at least SOME of the ability to what we've talked about in class with the MoD adaptations.