Why is it raining inside the building?

I arrived at Institute in Philadelphia on Sunday June 24. As nutty as it was, I think the first week was probably the easiest. There was no lesson planning the first week, just lots of lots of sessions. The days were intense- getting up at 5:15 and being at school 7-4:30. To be honest it's all kind of a blur right now. A hot blur. The school where I am working is not air-conditioned, and Philadelpha summers are like Chicago summers. On Friday a pipe burst, sending waterfalls through the school. Every sink in the building has a spray-painted sign above it warning that the water should not be consumed. I learned that the pipes in the building are all made with lead. I'm hoping the water fountains use different pipes.

On Monday, even thoguh it had not rained, we arrived at school as normal only ot find huge puddles and more waterfalls through the building. The water began to rise in some of the classrooms, so as the kids were arriving they began having all of us move our classroms to the other half of the huge building. This meant moving all of the posters and decorations we had hung up, rearranging all the desks and other items we had moved, basically re-doing our classrooms that had taken us a few hours on Friday to set up. Not a great start.

The kids were supposed to have a 15 minute advisory on the first day only, so they were sent to classrooms based on that arrangement. They weren't told where to go for first period until 9:40 (school starts at 8, second period starts at 10:10) in spite of the fact that we teachers had been assigned to our rooms. So the administration knew where each calss was going to be, it just took them an hour and 40 minutes to tell the kids where to go. I had a class of about 15 students plus my faculty advisor, who was in and out trying to get any info he could about where we shoudl all be. I chatted with two boys for most of the tie, finding out about their lives and what had brought them to summer school. Jadon told me about how he missed all his chemistry labs because he wasn't allowed ot sue the calculator he had already bought and didn't have money to buy the calculator his teacher was requiring. I also intercepted the beginning of an altercation ebtween a couple football players who had come straight from an early morning practice and weren't particularly keen on being in "school mode." Jadon showed me a song he wrote, and talked about how hard it was to be a smart kid in his school- once you let other people know, they want to cheat off of you, and teachers assume you cheat if you do well. He told me about being on an award winning chess team, and how he now coaches younger kids. So, while it was annoying to lose a day of teacing, it was great to get to chat with high school kids and get a feel for what I'd be doing for four weeks. It was only four years ago but I feel like i'd forgotten a lot of what it's like to be 15.

When I finally got my class, only one student showed up. We talked for a while, since we on;y had 15 minutes and there was no way I was fitting two hours of lessons into 15 minutes.