Popcorn and 10,000 shards of glass

Well... this morning I had six functioning ovens. By the end of the day I had five... and an empty space where one had been.

We're making popcorn balls! Day One was a demo of popcorn on the stovetop, which most students had never done, and led to one heckler in each crowd reminding me of the existence of microwaves.

The second part of Day One was to make the popcorn. And no, the caretaker is not happy with me, thanks for asking.

The demonstrations all went well. Out of 4 classes of students only one pair burned their popcorn, but I had my demo material left over, so I swapped with them. After two days of popcorn popping, not only does the room and hallway smell of it, but so do all the clothes I'm wearing - even my shoes!

In block 6, the third home ec class of the day, with one left to go, something happened. I finished the popcorn demo, waited for questions, and seeing none, sent the students back to their units to make popcorn. In the first wave of movement there was a "smack" and a "whoosh/crumble" (maybe someone can help me with my onomatopoeia?)

Of course, the commotion was right in the centre of the crowd, and I could not see WHAT had broken. Because with those sounds, SOMETHING must be broken.

I asked, and they replied - the stove. What? What do you mean "The stove is broken?"

I could only imagine that the door had fallen off. I was completely stunned by what I saw as I moved through the crowd.

The glass front of the oven door was completely shattered. Completely. Shattered.

Yeah... it was a lot like that. I didn't have my camera that day and I doubt that I would have found time to take a picture anyway. But this is pretty accurate. It's scary how easy it was to find this photo - things like this shouldn't happen often.

It seems that a student had hit the door when moving his chair, and like Corelle dishware, it fractured into thousands of pieces.

Now, this is halfway through the class and we still have popcorn to make, and I have a group with a broken stove, not to mention one heckuva pile of glass to deal with.

The caretaker was summoned. Other teachers emerged in response to my not entirely calm phone call to the office. Okay phone callS. The students settled into making their popcorn, while the adults tried to piece together just WHAT had happened.

Happily, no one was hurt. They made their popcorn, and will finish their popcorn balls tomorrow, as promised. I sure wished that block 6 was the final block of the day, but I still had one more to go.

Enter block 7, to complete their popcorn balls. I began to debrief them, and make it very clear that I had used up all of my patience and if they were going to get me to smile before the end of the day, it was going to take some effort on their part. The caretaker returned at that point to remove the wounded oven.

The new group of students in that unit were stunned as they watched their oven walk out of the room.

Instructions for completing the lab under our new and trying circumstances were issued. Popcorn balls were made and soon enough the confusion and worry was lost in the fun of pouring melted marshmallows over popcorn, and playing with the sticky threads.

Now, I just have to figure out how we're going to make our Chocolate Quinoa Cake next week, when I'm short one oven.

But tomorrow is a popcorn ball day...