Since I don’t have an eraser for the whiteboard in the classroom in Los Alamos (a.k.a. The End of the World), Clare gave me a tissue to erase the board on Tuesday. I left it there to use in the future, and since today was the future, I was grateful I hadn’t thrown it away. I plucked the tissue off the narrow wooden ledge on the wall above my white board and happily erased my writing. As I reached up to place the tissue back in its unofficial spot, I did a double-take. What had to be a scorpion was residing in the exact same spot where my tissue had been.

Determined to play it cool, I casually asked the class what kind of insect (are scorpions insects?) it was. My question was answered with a bunch of screaming. Since I didn’t know the word for scorpion in Spanish anyway, I realized my question was useless. I tried a different approach: “Is it dangerous?”  “Si si si si si si si!” all the kids screamed. By this time everyone was standing. Half the girls were as far away from the whiteboard as possible, and the other half were clinging to me. One boy, Jose Ignacio, grabbed a broom and started whacking at the wooden ledge.

The scorpion fell behind the whiteboard, then surprised us by falling all the way to the floor. Everyone screamed again and scattered, except for Jose. He continued to whack, this time on the ground, but when he stopped to evaluate the damage he had done, the scorpion still hadn’t given up on life. Alex snatched the opportunity and stomped on it, then dragged his foot across the floor to spread the scorpion’s insides all over.

The danger had passed, but the excitement remained. The kids no longer cared about direct and indirect articles (what’s not exciting about the, a, and an?) and convincing them to return to, and then stay in, their seats was impossible. As Clare says, “You can make plans, but you can’t project the outcome,” so I set my lesson plan aside and took the opportunity to review numbers (and release energy) via exercises and stretching. It was exhilarating–I successfully dodged my first unexpected obstacle and my students even knew their articles by the end of class.