Scars from the Tornado (4 page)

Miranda’s
paper talked about censorship at school, with several words cleverly blacked
out. Sabrina S’s paper was a touching tribute to her friend, Clayton, who had
been killed in a tornado three years earlier.

As I placed
the final paper on the Wall of Fame, I heard voices in the hallway. Students
and parents were arriving early to receive their first look at our new
facility. One girl raced into my classroom and shouted, “Mr. Turner, I’m in
your class this year!” and proceeded to tell me what she had been doing all
summer.

It wasn’t long
before the classroom was filled with students, former students, and parents.
The conversations, surprisingly, were not centered on the tornado, but were
about the new educational adventure we would be beginning in six short days.

The East
Middle School Family Picnic turned out to be a complete success. Carnival-type
games were set up outside, as well as various barbecues and food stands. No one
even blinked when I introduced my band as “Natural Disaster,” though when I
began singing they could quickly ascertain the reason for the name.

I watched with
amazement the interaction between faculty, parents, and students, especially my
fellow faculty members. I wondered if they, too, had been apprehensive about
returning to school, to this particular building, less than three months after
the tornado.

Was this a
sign of the East community moving forward, or was it just a sign that we needed
something, anything, to take us away from being tornado victims and get us back
to living again?

No matter what
the answer, one thing was certain. The value of education to the community had
never been spelled out so clearly. My depression, at least for the moment, had
vanished.

It was a building
that was destroyed by the tornado; my school was alive and well.

WELCOMING
 
THE
 
TEACHERS

A
pre-claustrophobia nervousness settled over me as I wheeled my car into a space
in the parking lot at Missouri Southern State University Monday morning, August
15.

It was the
first day for teachers to report back to work in the Joplin School District and
that meant the annual pep rally. I had never particularly cared for this event.
It was two hours in a small space with all of the hundreds of people who worked
for the school district. Being extremely claustrophobic, I dreaded the pep
rallies and with the added attention drawn to the Joplin Schools after the
tornado, I was dreading this one even more.

In past years,
the event had traditionally been held in the high school auditorium, but that
high school no longer existed, thanks to the tornado.

The second I
opened my car
door,
I could hear shouting,
intermittent applause, and music, punctuated by the pounding of a bass drum.

At first, I
thought it was an early MSSU band practice, but as I took the crosswalk to the
building where our district meeting was scheduled, the purpose of the noise
became clear.

The sustained
applause was for teachers returning to work. As someone who has written numerous
times over the past few years about the constant barrage of attacks on public
schoolteachers, this was a pleasant surprise.

Our community
was showing its appreciation.

When we
entered the auditorium for the program, we saw Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon standing
in the wings. The rest of the morning was something teachers in the Joplin
School District will never forget.

During that
time, we heard a powerful rendition of the National Anthem by one of my former
students, high school junior Hannah Cady, an uplifting speech by the governor,
and the remarkable chronicling by our Superintendent, C. J. Huff, of how the
school, the community, the nation, and the world, had combined to produce the
miracle of a school district that had 10 buildings either destroyed or heavily
damaged, starting on time.

We left the
auditorium ready for whatever challenges may come our way as we began the
2011-2012 school year. Eleventh and twelfth graders would be holding their
classes in a refurbished building at
Northpark
Mall,
the ninth and 10th graders, would be at the former Memorial Middle School
building, which long again had been one of Joplin’s two high schools before
they were combined. At East Middle School, we were ready to begin classes in
our refurbished warehouse.

But it's
school. The teachers were ready, and maybe for the first time after a summer in
which everything has revolved around the destruction of the Joplin Tornado, the
students were ready, too.

Three short
months ago, we were looking at once proud structures that had been reduced to
rubble by the fury of nature.

It was only a
week after the tornado, in what had been termed as a family gathering,
Superintendent C. J. Huff made the inspiring announcement that school would
start on time.

The following
day would be filled with meetings to prepare us for our return to Joplin
Schools, as we had never known them before.

Our meeting at
Missouri Southern was the first step in the school district’s road to recovery.

FIRST
DAY
OF
SCHOOL

It was the
first day of school and a sixth grader did not know where the office was in our
new building.

He asked
eighth grade science teacher Mike Wallace for directions. Wallace, glancing
down at the end of the hall, told the youngster, “Go down the hall and turn
right at the governor.”

Whether the
child knew who Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was, I had no idea, but the presence of
the governor in our hallways and the national media at every new or refurbished
building in the Joplin School District made our first day of school a memorable
one.

Though it was
a new era for the Joplin schools, my routine stayed the same. I arrived at the
building shortly after 6:30 a.m. That would give me approximately two hours to
collect my thoughts, make final revisions on the introductions to my classes
and the tedious explanations of class rules that every teacher goes through on
the first day or two of classes.

The media and
dignitaries began arriving shortly after 8.

Normally, so
much media might be considered intrusive, but not on this day, just three
months after the tornado destroyed or heavily damaged 10 of our 19 schools.

On this day,
the national and world media were welcome because it was so important to thank
the world that made this day possible.

In the days
after the tornado, the idea that school would start on time seemed
an impossibility
. Joplin High School, a center of the
community, had been blown apart by nature’s fierce fury, leaving the words “Op
High School” for all to see. That did not last long. Within a couple of days,
someone had added two letters to that sign, an H and an E, turning it into Hope
High School, and setting the stage for the complete resurrection of the Joplin
School District.

The effort
began with school administrators and board members who had to create solutions
because there was no blueprint for how to deal with this kind of devastation.
Teachers and staff were brought into the equation and the Joplin community,
parents, students, business owners, and people who had no connection to
elementary and secondary education except for paying the taxes that support it.
The restoration of Joplin schools and the idea that they could open on time,
only 87 days after the tornado, became the goal of an entire community.

And that
community extended far beyond the city limits of Joplin. There was much need in
this community and in this school system and people from across Missouri, the
nation, and the world, stepped in to take care of that need.

Millions in
donations came, brought about in part by the national media that brought attention
to the difficulties we were facing.

The United
Arab Emirates chipped in with a half-million dollars and the promise of another
half-million in matching funds to provide laptops for every Joplin High School
student as a part of the school district’s
Oneto
-One
initiative.

Most of the
effort was steered successfully through the district’s Bright Futures program,
an initiative started two years ago to help provide equipment for schools and
to cover the needs of the poorest children in our community.

Bright
Futures’ success had already been imitated in neighboring school districts well
before the tornado. Its expansion to meet the challenges of tornado recovery
guaranteed it would be imitated across the nation.

So when we saw
reporters with their cameras and notebooks approaching our students and us
Wednesday morning, we met them with deep gratitude.

They were the
ones who allowed us to express our thank
yous
to a
world that adopted the Joplin community and made it their own.

During the
first hour, my planning period, I followed Gov. Nixon as he visited some of the
classrooms. When the bell rang for second hour, I was ready for my first class
of the 2011-2012 school year. After all of the turmoil, the sounds of children
talking non-stop as they entered Room 804 added a touch of normalcy in a world
that had not seen normalcy since May 22.

MEMORIES
OF THE TORNADO

MY TORNADO
STORY

BY
J
ENNIFER
N
GUYEN

“Happy
Birthday!” Everyone knows that these words
are meant to be
said
out of happiness and celebration. But when they are expressed on a
day of total destruction, devastation, and depression, are they really that
effective? A birthday, a day of joy targeted at the passing of age, is usually
a whole day filled with presents, smiles, and cake. Lots and lots of cake!
Well, that’s at least what my family thought birthdays were supposed to be
like. That was, until the day came. The day that was life changing and will be
forever marked in the history books of our nation for generations to come. The
day that caused souls to be ripped apart from their families and thrown out
into a jungle of madness.
The day that my city lost, what
seemed at the time, everything.

I woke up that
Sunday morning to a bright, dazzling sun. As I went through my daily morning
routine, I checked my iPod to discover the weather conditions for this
particular Sunday. What it seemed like to me was that Joplin would be
experiencing rain showers and maybe a few strokes of lightning. This was not
unusual for this time of the year, which was late spring, in our Southern
Missouri region. So, my family and I attended our regular eleven fifteen mass
at St. Peter’s Apostle Church. By that time, the sky had developed a gray-like
color and was covered with poufy, dark clouds scattered into bunches, compiling
up into the air. What was ironic was that during church that day, my parish
prayed for the unfortunate people in the paths of the latest natural disasters,
without a single clue about what was heading our way…

My cousin had
her birthday party held at about noon that same day, so, as you can imagine, we
rushed out of our church right after mass finished. Actually, she was having
two birthday
parties- one with her friends and one with her
family, and I was invited to both! Her birthday party with her other
five-year-old friends was at the
Macaroo
Gym, the
most wonderful place a five-year-old could dream of. Who wouldn’t want to spend
three hours jumping on blown up, bouncy devices? I think I was there to help
the little kids have fun, but considering the fact that I wasn’t allowed in
quite a few bouncy houses; I don’t know if I was any help. Anyway, when her
first party was over, around two to three o’clock, the sky was at a dark,
cloudy phase. But at that time, no one was really worried. It was just another
heavy rainstorm, wasn’t it?

After that
party, she had another party that started around four to five thirty. You would
think that a little five-year-old would be partied out, but apparently, she
wasn’t. So, at that time, the sky was still pretty dark. And when I say “dark,”
I mean a deep gray. But halfway through the party, right after we finished
dinner, it really started pouring outside. We didn’t think much of it.

But as the
weather started to get worse, we decided to click on the Weather Channel and
take a look at the news reports. We weren’t really scared, yet; we just wanted
to make sure. Hey, it’s better to be safe than sorry. There was only one
problem. In the path of my aunt and the remote control was a very difficult obstacle.
My dad. These things happened to us all the time (the storm, I meant), and my
dad wasn’t going to easily let go of the remote and the heated show of Cops
that was on the television screen. In his mind, in everyone’s mind, this was
just the same crazy Missouri weather that always circled our region. In fact,
my aunt had to practically wrestle the remote from my dad! It was not an easy
battle. But in the end, everyone was laughing…until the news flashed on. At
that point, there was no more laughing and merry faces, just serious
expressions and gasps from the silent, but alert audience.