The Creativity Killers

About three years ago, I created Mr. Turtle out of a newspaper geodesic dome from one of my Technology classes. I rigged him up on the ceiling and he's been the beloved mascot of my classroom ever since (even featured on my class website). The next school year, I created the spider, who never really got a name. Sometimes I refer to her as Charlotte. Then last year, I created the Tech-Lab tree. Slowly but surely, my classroom has gotten cuter. Well, it's been a bad year for my dome creations. When I was cleaning up my mess at the end of last year, I decided my ceiling was too crowded, and I cut down Charlotte, with thoughts up hanging her up in my protoyping lab instead. She sat around all summer, and then when I came back to my lab to prepare for the new year, I managed to rig her up like this: I think she's happier there. Freaking people out when they walk into the lab and (eventually) realize there's a giant spider above their heads, guarding the door for me. Then, about a month into the school year, the fire marshall and safety inspectors came to visit me. They came in during TA, taking pictures of stuff with their iPad while my students and I tried to have class. Finally they gathered in this ominous circle and I got brave and went over to talk to them. First thing out of the fire marshall's mouth--"You have to take down this turtle." ...

I was (I felt) reasonably upset. I asked them to explain, and they did a poor job. Some lady who I'm sure must've been important kept saying something about the "configuration" being a problem. Oh, and also the tree had to go too. I asked about my spider, and they said I could keep her because she was in an area that wouldn't normally be unsupervised. I decided not to correct them.

Apparently if a kid lit any of my dome-creations on fire, they would burn up a lot faster. They were big bullies and I was furious enough to email my principal afterwards to plead my turtle's case. My mascot! He was up there for THREE YEARS, and no safety inspector said anything about it, and seriously, if a kid wants to burn down the school, the lack of turtle-dome won't stop him/her!

This was back in September, I think. I eventually talked to my principal in person and cooled down a lot--the fire marshall devastated a lot of classrooms when he visited--he's going to make the SpEd teachers get rid of their couches, and they tore down this cute paper tree our librarian made for the media center. Apparently, all those things burn 10 times faster than normal paper on the walls and they can't be where students are. In the faculty room is fine for couches...I guess our safety isn't important at all or something.

So anyway, Mr. Turtle had to come down. I contemplated strapping him to the top of my car and bringing him home...but where on earth would I have put him?! My ceiling is awfully low--low enough for a short person like me to reach up on tip toe and touch it. I decided he'd join Charlotte in the prototyping lab. As for the tree, a colleague of mine suggested I cut a hole in the top of the dome, so there won't be an air pocket, which is what accelerates burning. I don't know if that will satisfy the fire marshall, but I did it anyway and haven't removed the tree. He probably won't come back until next year (unless we had so many violations that he decides he needs to come back and check on us), so I have at least until then before I might REALLY have to get rid of my tree. Pooey.

Currently working on giant origami snowflakes, to replace the origami rockets I have hanging from my ceiling (apparently those are ok, even though they also have air pockets!)(and the fire marshall thought they were spiders!). Hooray for my obsessive need to decorate for Christmas!