Lights Off means Go!

The beginning of school includes such teaching as routines and procedures, but don't get frustrated when the students don't catch on as quickly as you would like. Remember some of them haven't practiced for a "fire" drill since the end of last term. They forget exactly what to do or what it means. Some of them catch on quickly. Some not so quick. Today was the day to teach the new kindergarten students about fire drills. We watch a short video, then we practiced. We read a social story, and then we practice. We talked it through step-by-step, and then we practice. We rewarded those who were successful in the procedure with Skittles and we practice, and practiced and practiced.

After going through it over and over I still had one little boy that would not or could not understand exactly why were doing the line up, the walking out, and the funny noise I was making to try to emulate the sound of the fire alarm. No amount of coaxing, bribery, or other systems seem to help him to understand that he needed to move from his activity, to line up and to follow us out of the building.

Finally, one of the other boys, who had enough of the procedure training, looked at him and said, "Hey, get up and let's go! You don't want to ever be left behind in this dark room!"  With that he looked at me, then at the boy, got up and moved to the line. From the next two practices he did just fine.

I asked the other young man why he thought that his speech helped his friend move so quickly. "Oh," he said, "he's afraid of the dark. So when you turn out the lights to leave the room, he will always go with us."

I had forgotten that sometimes our boys and girls need to be motivated by something as simple as a light switch turning to "off" to indicate that we are done, we are leaving, and that you need to follow the rest of us out the door. From that point on, when we had a fire drill, we lined up, turn off the lights and left the building with everyone ready to go.  No one wanted to be left in the dark.