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Subscribe to RSSWhen the tornado hit Joplin, Mo., it almost seemed to have targeted education, destroying 10 of the town’s 12 schools.
As the storm roared through May 22, the first thing Irving Elementary teacher Shelly Tater thought about was her students. “I drove down there and it looked like a war zone. People (were) running everywhere, screaming. You couldn’t even drive because there were things all over the road.” Tater made her way to the school to find it demolished by the storm. She then looked toward the surrounding neighborhood. “It looked like a landfill,” she says, “You couldn’t even tell where the houses had been. I was just worried about the kids."
Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Gathered in a portable schoolroom, Irving Elementary third grade teacher Patricia Bell reads "First Day Jitters" to her third grade class on the first day of school in Joplin, Mo., Wednesday, Aug. 17. The original school, along with ninety percent of the student's homes, were destroyed in the May 22 tornado.
Ninety percent of the students’ homes were destroyed or damaged so badly that they weren’t fit to live in. With tears welling up in her eyes, Tater says, “I just had to get in the mindset of … I probably am going to have some kids that aren’t going to be with us this year, and that’s hard.”
Today, almost three months later, 100 percent of the students are OK, and most of them are starting their school year at a new, albeit temporary, school three miles northeast from their old school. Six of the classrooms are in trailers, and the rest are in the old Washington Educational building. It was an elementary school years ago but sat abandoned last year.
On their first day in their new, but temporary school, Irving Elementary third graders talk about the tornado that destroyed their school and many of their homes in Joplin, Missouri.
“They pulled in a trailer for the kitchen where the lunch ladies make lunches and haul them over to the cafeteria on carts,” says Tater. “The makeshift playground isn’t very big compared to what they had at Irving, it’s about one fourth as big. There’s sod laid so the kids can have a soccer field and play ball.“
Jim Seida / msnbc.com
A custodial worker walks into the new, temporary classrooms at Irving Elementary School (Washington Campus) after the end of the first day of school.
Through the efforts of everybody in the school district, Joplin made sure that the kids had desks, school supplies, and in many cases new shoes and clothes. “Everybody just reached out to everybody. People from other buildings that weren’t affected were coming together and helping people look through rubbage,” Tater says, “And then donations, volunteers.” Working nonstop, the school board did what had to be done to make it happen. They spent late nights, even sleeping at the school.
The kids looked happy to be back in school again. “Kids are resilient, they bounce back pretty quickly,” Tater says, “I think they’re ready to move on, they’re ready to have that normalcy, they’re ready to have that structure, the discipline. They’re looking forward to having their routine again, even if they’re living something different. Coming to school, that’s a normal thing for them.”
Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Trying to give her students a sense of security, Irving Elementary School third grade teacher Shelly Tater gives her students a tour of one of four concrete tornado shelters parked outside their temporary school.
This and other new schools in Joplin have a feature the old ones didn’t: tornado shelters. The huge concrete bunkers hold 34 people each. The older schools used traditional tornado drills: Kids were taught to sit in the hallway with their hands over their heads. “The kids were curious about the shelters, so we went out there, opened one, went inside. They were excited that there was a Porta-Potty in there. Just to reassure them, we do have a safe place to go, so don’t worry about it if something like that were to happen again. We’re going to be there to take care of you and protect you.”
Roger Nomer / The Joplin Globe via AP
This May 24, 2011 photo shows the Irving Elementary School, constructed in 1927, after being damaged by the May 22 tornado that ripped through Joplin, Mo.
More from msnbc.com's reporting trip to Joplin:
Photoblog: Tornado 'helps' couple downsize
Photoblog: After tornado's harsh lesson, Joplin's child survivors return to school
Story: Joplin students head back to a new high-tech high school, in the mall
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Please note that all the MS and H.S. students received an nw laptop computer from the UAE. Muslims giving our children the tools they need to get an education and our republican governors taking it away!
WOW, nice to see our side get help from someone, for a change. TY UAE!!
Oh , and while they are rebuilding. They might want to check out the monolithic design. It's wind and fire resistant.
http://www.monolithic.com/
Shut up clwyd-2621393. This is about survival not politics.
Hmm, considering your post. I looked at the pictures again and noted a DELL advertisement in between them. I then googled for a story about DELL helping the Joplin schools. Funny, couldn't find it..............
So yea, thanks UAE. So UAE helps their survival , and DELL just makes money on the page. And your pissed at clwyd??????
The fact that the folks in Joplin were able to make this school year possible in just 3 short months is just amazing. They could not have done it without the support of many outside the town. As the article states it took a lot of effort to be able to pull this off. I applaud UAE and many others that helped make this happen. I live near the highway that goes to Joplin, as I was headed to work I saw many relief trucks headed that way right after the storm. It made me sad yet happy that there was help on the way.
The ads are random. If it weren't for ads you would not be able to read this story. Please stop the ugliness and smile instead that those students have a place to go to school.
I'm smiling , I agree TOTALLY with you on the pride you must feel for the people of Joplin.
My question is why a US PC company didn't come forward to help them with their PC needs?
Why did it take a foreign entity??
Maybe they did Scar. Maybe they were humble enough to not seek attention so as not to make it look like an advertisement. I don't know who donated what but I'm sure there were and will be many anonymous donors. I'd like to hope that the big companies helped out. I'm sure if you ask the mayor of Joplin, he has a long list of thank-you notes to send. And it would be great to see that some of the names on the list are from US companies.
For now, it's not the time for pats on the back but time to get the town back on it's feet.
Wow, you mean a city that had been leveled by a natural disaster pulled itself up by it's bootstraps and started over without crying that the Federal government must come in and save them? Somebody alert New Orleans
Hmm, the lack of funds caused by who?? http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/house-majority-leader-eric-cantor-r-va-says-no-aid-for-joplin-without-cuts
Joplin people have certainly pulled together WITH the help of thousands of volunteers AND emergency help from FEMA - lots of help from FEMA. And that is the way it should work. We are one. So many local heroes, so many much-appreciated volunteers. And appropriate help from the government.
The theme is *lessons*
The tornado taught a *lesson*
What, I'm not sure
Now they go to school to learn *lessons*
Just like the tornado!!!
See??? :))))
Its about time a foreign country helps us out.
Part of our debt is the aid we supply others.
i would also like to see our own helping in this and i know they have.
but a list would have been great. Even if they did it just for the tax benefit.
Just days after the city of Joplin was decimated by a Category 5 tornado that did unprecedented damage the federal government was, rightly, talking about disaster relief. Remember the reply of Eric Cantor, majority leader of the House of Representatives: they will get aid only when we can cut spending by that much. As mr "let them eat cake" cantor was making his idiot comment about Americans who are in trouble and giving all his effort to help Americans who are not in trouble (the rich and their tax cuts), the UAE, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and thousands of volunteers and others were sending aid and going to help. Telling moment on who is helping and who is not.