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Lafayette Sq resident and Pattonvilleteacher

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Teaching After the Good Friday TornadoJanette Lonsdale • Thu, Jun 02, 2011

With the close of schools for summer, teachershave time to reflect. For local resident EveDrueke this means looking back on the daysafter the Good Friday tornado, and the impactit had on her kindergarten class at a RoseAcres School.

Like many St. Louis residents, Drueke watchedthe storm roll in. Meanwhile, in Rose Acres,where Drueke works at the PattonvilleSchool District, her students were feeling thefull force of the storm. It was the worst stormto hit the region in 40 years according to the National Weather Service with windsfrom 165 to 200 mph.

On Saturday morning, when the full extent of the storm damage was becomingclear, Drueke was glued to her phone and Facebook, checking up on her studentsand their families.

Monday was a workday like never before.

“I come in from I-270, so everything looked pretty normal to me… it looked likethere had been a good storm,” said Drueke. “But when we got tothe neighborhoods behind the school where our district kiddos live, it looked like amovie scene.

The school building was intact, but branches, bits of siding and shingles littered theschool grounds. Power lines were down everywhere and it was difficult to evenremember the neat streets that surrounded the school just days before.

Clean up work was already underway and rooftops were dotted with blue tarps. Thesound of chain saws and wood chippers rang out everywhere.

“Huge old trees were sticking up like they were broken off twigs and there were alot of branches that were obscuring everything,” said Drueke. “We could see intopeoples bathrooms and halls.”

The school district, which already had a disaster plan in place, was ready tomobilize. On Monday morning the family of every student in the school was called,their status checked, and their immediate needs assessed.

To get displaced children to school on Tuesday a bus route was planned to pick upstudents from hotels and the homes of friends and family.

By 10 a.m., teachers, mothers and fathers, and other schools, were opening updonation drives for clothes, toiletries and heavy duty cleaning products.

“Members of a dance team from the high school went to Schnucks to solicitdonations for the people whose food got ruined,” said Drueke. “It was kind ofamazing that we knew where everybody was and what their needs were, all beforeMonday lunch.”

Service International, an organization that provides disaster relief worldwide, wason the scene and school staff joined its clean-up crews.

“They gave us t-shirts, work gloves and told us where to go,” she said. “Wecleaned out a yard in an hour with a couple of guys with chain saws; there were somany people we kind of made an assembly line and just hauled branches.”

School was open again for lessons on Tuesday morning. Children whowere obviously upset, unusually talkative, withdrawn or whose home hadsustained serious damage, were closely monitored by teachers, counselors andsocial workers, many of whom were called in for the disaster.

“They even hired roving subs for teachers,” said Drueke. “If teachers were upset

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and needed a couple of minutes to compose themselves or call a handy man or justneeded a break from all the stress.” Out of the 300 students in the K-5 school, many student's homes had sustaineddamage, but only a few students would be out of their homes for months. A coupleof the teachers and a nurse were also dealing with home damage. According to Drueke, all lessons plans for the day were set aside. “I teach kindergarten, and they really wanted to talk a lot,” she said. “We spentmost of the morning reading books about being scared and being brave and theyreally wanted to draw about the tornado and write about it.” The experience came out in play too. Drueke observed how her students re-enacted the tornado in Lego games. For the most part, students were excited bythe great adventure of the storm and were enthusiastic to tell each other abouttrees up rooted, buildings damage and siding torn off walls. All during that first day back at school and for a number of days after, school staffwatched the weather forecast with unease. They were concerned how the childrenwould react if there was another bad storm and sirens. Teachers worked to helpchildren acknowledge scary things and feel safe. With the school’s policy of regularfire, earthquake and intruder drills, both students and teachers knew theywould know what to do in an emergency. Through good disaster planning and the help of volunteers and generous donations,the immediate needs of the school’s students and their families were met withinfour days of the storm. However, for some families ongoing support is needed and is being provided byPatton Care. It is an organization that offers support to Pattonville School Districtfamilies in crisis. For more information: To make a donation to Patton Care, the victims of the Good Friday Tornado andtornado victims in Joplin MO, visit the Pattonville School District website:http://www.psdr3.org

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