Earthquake!

“Hey, mom, there’s been an earthquake!” Vincent yelled during the morning hubbub of getting ready and watching the morning news. I thought to myself Illinois is a pretty far away place (I now, I lived there for two summers teaching at Western Illinois University). Vincent insisted it was felt here. Sure enough, the broadcasters said that a building (pictured above bottom late in the day on Earthquake Day), not too far from where Vincent took his final for algebra and Hillary Clinton gave her speech here in Louisville, had lost some of its upper façade because of the quake. Ironically, my fifth-grade students had just finished studying the inside of the Earth, including volcanoes, earthquakes, and a little of plate tectonics (much of which I remember from a book on CD I listened to several years ago, "Krakatoa; The Day the World Exploded August 27, 1883" on a long car ride from Florida to Ohio). We even made models of the inside of the Earth. Once at school my students were so excited to tell me all about how they thought their brothers were jumping on the bed, or that it sounded like a tornado, but two of my students’ stories were just great. Karen (pictured above top with her model of hte inside of the Earth on Earthquake Day) had tried to explain to her mom that Mrs. Gregory says that earthquakes are caused by two plates rubbing together and one of them finally giving. She even used the hand motions I had used to help explain it, but her mom insisted that plates are for the table and there are no other kinds of plates. Kent (pictured above bottom with his model) on the other hand was much cooler about the earthquake experience. “I knew it was earthquake. I see one in Vietnam. It not that big.” But all of my students were happy to take their models home and maybe some parents will see that there really are plates.

-- Stephanie