Best Story Ever

I have yet to meet another art teacher who can top my best student teaching story. I was assigned to a very sweet art teacher (I won't name names for her sake). I taught in the afternoons and before I came into work she called me and said not to come teach today. So I'm thinking of all the reasons why she wouldn't want me to come in...did I screw up my lesson, do the kids not like me, does she not like me...what could it be. To my complete shock she told me that I couldn't come into work because SHE BURNT DOWN THE ART ROOM that morning!!! Swear to god!

Apparently she was heating wax on a hot plate and left the room to go check her mail box in the office and while she was gone for that 5 minutes somehow the hot plate caught the place on fire. The entire art room was burnt to a crisp! Luckily the school was set up with multiple buildings so just that one building was damaged...for the rest of the school year and this was October. The surrounding classrooms were a total loss from the smoke/water damage.

I came in a few days later to help her sift through the mess to salvage any art supplies we could find (with the permission of the administration/ fire department). We mustered up some markers and a box of paper and for the next week I taught with her from a shopping cart in other teacher's classrooms while they were on prep. We smelt like a campfire with all the charred drawing paper. Thankfully my university deemed it necessary to place me in another school for student teaching...I dunno...I guess when the master teacher burns down the art room maybe they're not the best mentor to train up a young teacher. lol.

So while it makes for a great student teaching story I did learn a very valuable lesson...never leave hot, melting materials unattended and just say NO to making batiks! So when I rummaged through the cupboards of my new classroom this year I found a class set of these electric wax melters. I screamed and immediately threw them away! Never will I melt wax in my own classroom.