In teaching a class there is a critical threshold, which, once crossed, changes everything. At the beginning of a term, students start out not knowing each other or the teacher and unsure of what to expect. Then a day comes when you teach a class and encounter a completely new dynamic. It's seldom a gradual process. Suddenly the students are comfortable with each other and much more at ease and uninhibited. Although this is a positive transition, especially for a subject as interactive as a foreign language, the change is often marked by absolute time-consuming chaos. My beginning Portuguese class last week was a textbook example of this phenomenon.
As I was just starting class, a small squeak was heard in the air vent. My students were concerned. There had been a brief discussion about this in the previous class a week before, and at least two of the students were convinced that a kitten had become trapped in the air ducts. Now they were especially concerned, because the kitty had been in there for at least a week and was probably hungry (and possibly thirsty).
To me, it sounded only remotely like a cat, and I was pretty sure that, if a cat were really meowing in there, I would know it. But some of the students were absolutely convinced. One of them stood on a chair and talked to the kitty through the overhead vent cover to try and coax it closer. There was another squeak, and she believed the kitty was answering her.
I still didn't believe there was a cat, but I didn't want to chance a feline death on the off chance that my instincts were wrong. I found someone who worked in the main office, but they weren't equipped to access the air vents. We finally decided to contact Public Safety, which is sort of like the University's private police force. After a lengthy discussion on who would make the call and with what phone, one of my students placed the call on her cell phone. Simultaneously, another student went upstairs to try to find another access point. From what I could make out, the police were skeptical and even a bit rude. At one point, they even wanted to know if my student was really a student. (What relevance would that have to the issue at hand?)
Eventually the call came to an end, and the student who had gone upstairs came back down. On this particular day we had someone new watching the class, because she was considering signing up for it. I kept reassuring her that this was not a typical class. We lost about twenty minutes to the kitty. Fortunately, it was a two-hour class, so we actually did manage to get a lot done. Strangely, the police never did show up. Perhaps they were busy with other things.
Despite continued squeaks, by the end of the class the students seemed far less certain of their kitty conviction. If you're reading this with concern over the possibility of the kitty being real, let me reassure you that I am 99.999% certain that there was never a kitty.