The clock said 3:42 a.m.  Doug and I simultaneously sat bolt upright in bed.  Instantly wide awake, we realized the smoke alarm was going off. By the time we got to the door, the alarm had stopped but I stopped to touch the doorknob before I opened it to make sure it wasn’t hot.  There was light coming in from under the door so I knew David was up (did I mention he’s a vampire?) so we went out to check.  There he was, calmly watching some documentary and as we walked in he said, “oh yeah, I don’t know what’s going on but the smoke alarm when off”. And then he went back to his documentary.  In the meantime, I’m checking to see if he left his teakettle on too long, sniffing around to see if anything is burning.  Nothing.

The funny thing is that the smoke detector batteries had all been switched out last week.  Everything was brand new so this shouldn’t have happened.  We made David get up and check out his space but everything seemed ok, so we went back to bed.  As soon as we zoned out again – BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP…..  Doug is now verbalizing expletives under his breath as he gets up to look for 9 volt batteries.  And what do you do when you can’t find any new ones?  You start robbing other things in the hopes something will work.  So he switched it out, but now there was this annoying CHIRP coming from the living room.  Now, our room is in the back of the apartment so Doug comes back in the room and says, he thinks he can sleep with the chirp and we’ll fix it in the morning.  Sure, he can sleep with the chirp – he’s deaf!  I on the other hand would be able to hear a chirp coming from another apartment down the hall.  But I thought I would try – how hard could it be?  Did you know that the smoke detector chirps about every 35 seconds?  You do now.  In the meantime, Doug is already out so I’m going to try again. So it was a mixed blessing when the alarm went off again!  So now it’s about 4:15 a.m. and Doug is off to the store to buy batteries.

New batteries installed soon after (and coffee picked up as well) and we go back to bed.  Only to have the alarm go off again.  Now by this time, I’m sure most people might be concerned that it’s picking up something in the walls, but all we can think of is getting to sleep.  The chirp then returns, so Doug (wonderful man) gets up yet again, but this time when he returns, no sound.  Amazing what taking the detector apart and shutting off the circuit breaker can do.

Later that morning (hard to imagine this all happened within hours), the maintenance guy came back and replaced the smoke detector completely which had apparently lived out its life and the alternating beeping and chirping was its last hurrah.  Case solved!

I’ve been sitting on this story for days, trying to find an analogy to tie this all together and again, I refer back to kids and teaching.  How many times do we have a kid who explodes (BEEPS) in the middle of what we’re trying to do and all we want to do it turn it off and get back to the business of teaching?  Or how about that kid that just picks or “chirps” at you for attention and you cut them off or reprimand them for disrupting class?  You know the ones.  And sometimes those chirps are really quiet, but chirps nonetheless, and we just block those out and ignore them. But what if these are the child’s final attempts to let you know that they are at the end of their rope?  They’re trying in every way they can to get your attention and instead of working to figure out why, you just try to shut it off so that you can get back to sleep – I mean, work.  While there are those few kids who just like to push buttons, the truth is, most younger kids can just react without thinking and those of us with an agenda and some self control sometimes assume they can just stop the behavior.  But what if we spent more time this new school year trying to figure out “why”?  These are kids who need someone to trust so badly and sometimes they do these things to test us.  How many times can we shut them off before they can’t trust us or anyone else at all?  Can we afford to have these kids “disconnected” and then send them off into society in the future?  I believe we’re seeing what can happen in a society when people feel disconnected,  as though nobody is listening to the beeps and chirps.

So, maybe this year I focus on doing a little more listening, questioning why, and building more trust with those kids who need it the most and not just disconnecting them after the chirp.  Imagine what could happen if we all did something like this in our little corners of the world, no matter where we are – maybe there would be more connections and less beeping and chirping.