美国国家公共电台 NPR Louisiana Kids Return To School, A Bubble Of Normalcy After Massive Floods

Louisiana Kids Return To School, A Bubble Of Normalcy After Massive Floods

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Things are far from normal for people in Louisiana hit by last month's historic flooding. Thousands have lost their homes, their cars, their jobs. But one routine resumed this week in Baton 2 Rouge 3. Students are back in class after a three-week interruption. Here's NPR's Debbie Elliott.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE 4: There's a familiar sound in communities around Baton Rouge.

ELLIOTT: Kids are tussling on school playgrounds again even as their families' soaked belongings 5 lay in heaps along neighborhood streets. Here at Claiborne Elementary in North Baton Rouge, every available space has been converted to a classroom. The campus is now hosting students displaced from Howell Park Elementary.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Visitors we have on the campus - teachers, today you will have to go with your students to the cafeteria.

ELLIOTT: The goal is to keep it normal even though the schools are merged 6, says host principal Rochelle Anderson.

ROCHELLE ANDERSON: We wanted to make sure that the students walked into the school that was very structured regardless of the disarray 7. Once you walk through the building, that disarray would somehow diminish.

ELLIOTT: Every class has a room. There's no doubling up. And rules are in place, as Ms. Pham reminds her first graders.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: So do you talk when I do this?

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: No.

ELLIOTT: But Anderson says the school's being more lenient 8 about uniforms and supplies washed away in the flood.

ANDERSON: We'll feed them. We'll clothe them. We'll give them supplies. We'll love them. But more importantly, we're going to teach them.

ELLIOTT: Anderson is displaced herself and lost her vehicle in the flood, one of about a third of staff members in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system affected 9. Twelve schools are now meeting elsewhere.

ROCHELLE WASHING-SCOTT: Good morning.

ELLIOTT: At Claiborne school, the Howell Park principal, Rochelle Washing-Scott, makes the rounds to make sure her teachers and students are comfortable in the new setting. The biggest issue has been transportation, she says. Most of her students walk to school, but now they're spread out across the region with no place to call home.

WASHINGTON-SCOTT: That's been the painful part of it. So that's why we've been making it such a big deal for a school to be the haven 10, the safe house, the place where at least you know if your baby's here (laughter), they're fine until you figure out kind of what you need to do as far as living arrangements go.

ELLIOTT: The living arrangement for nearly a hundred East Baton Rouge Parish students means passing through this metal detector 11 at the River Center downtown, the city's emergency shelter. Sarita Fritzler with Save the Children says the situation takes a toll 12.

SARITA FRITZLER: At first it might be exciting to be living in a shelter, to be meeting, you know, this new surrounding. But then now we're seeing children who are just anxious. Like, what's next? Where do we go next? They've seen people come and go, and they're still here.

ELLIOTT: For the three weeks that school was interrupted, Save the Children had a space in the shelter for kids to play games and have somebody to talk to. Now it serves as an after-school program.

PATRICIA DUNCAN: How was school today?

TALESHA COLEMAN: Good.

DUNCAN: It was good.

ELLIOTT: Worker Patricia Duncan is at a table, molding Play-Doh with 11-year-old Talesha Coleman in her first day back in class. She says they wrote stories about what has happened since the flood.

What was your story?

TALESHA: Me being here.

LOUELLA COLEMAN: That's my little grandbaby. That's Talesha. And you know, I tell her we just keep it positive.

ELLIOTT: Louella Coleman is raising two grandchildren, Talesha and her 6-year-old sister. She's disabled and uses a walker to get around the shelter. She has a wide, warm smile despite her predicament. The family has been living here since August 12 when her rental 13 house got water and she lost everything.

COLEMAN: I've gotten to the point where I just leave it in God's hand now. That's all I can do.

ELLIOTT: Coleman is glad to have the girls back in school. She calls herself a diehard for education. But things are off to a rocky start because the first graders' bus hasn't made it back to the shelter, and it's now after 6.

COLEMAN: She's not here yet. For them to just have her sitting there at the bus terminal is frightening to me because she's just 6. She's not used to that.

ELLIOTT: The aftermath of the flood means dealing 14 with a lot that people aren't used to. The shelter will be closing next week, and Coleman has yet to find a place to live. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Baton Rouge.

(CROSSTALK)