Close Call

Almost two years ago, my school moved into a beautiful new building. We had been working in these little old trailers, so we were ecstatic to move. It's a great building that we still love. The neighborhood is shady, but I have almost twice the square footage for my classroom, so I can't complain.

Even before we moved in to the building, we had a major concern. All the teachers and administrators were concerned that one day there would be an accident on the highway that goes by our school and that a car would roll down the hill into our playground. The school district and city assured us that this could not happen and that the playground was safe.

Well, as predicted, it happened. Last Friday I was sitting on the floor of my classroom working on a poster with my partner teacher. I heard a crunching sound outside and just figured that the grounds department was working on clearing out some of the ice that is completely covering our playground. A few moments later, our custodian came running into my classroom and said, "Did you see the accident?" We said no and looked out the window. Sure enough, there was an SUV right there in our playground, smashed in one of the pieces of equipment. A pickup truck hit the SUV as it was going through the intersection and it went flying down the hill, over/through the fence, and right into the playground.

By God's grace, we don't have students at school on Fridays, so no children were there to get hurt. Furthermore, I think I should write a thank you letter to our PTA for buying that piece of playground equipment last spring; because had it not been there, the car would have hit my classroom wall or been in my classroom. Plus, the two drivers involved were shook up, but not hurt. It was quite an adventure, to say the least. Of course, it was on the news and on the front page of the local section of the paper, so it will be interesting to see what parents have to say when we are back to school tomorrow.