I can teach in the dark

So today the power went out during school. No electricity. No internet. No cell phone reception. It was kind of scary to think that we were temporarily cut off from all of the outside world (as I like to call it). There was absolutely no power at all in the entire village. My room has no windows, so my Alaska Studies class at the time was hit especially hard by the outage. It was literally pitch black in my classroom. My first reaction?

"Everyone take out their cell phones and wave them in the air so we can see."

 I pretended to get a little concert vibe going and one of my students even took out a lighter. I ran to get a flashlight and make sure the world wasn't ending. Most classes weren't phased as much because they had windows to rely on. I was going to take the class outside but it was raining and pretty cold. I settled on plan B which was to continue to teach with my flashlight. I took the opportunity to goof around like I was telling a ghost story around a campfire. It wasn't my finest lesson, and I'm not sure how much my students retained about Russia's occupation of Alaska, but now I know I can teach in the dark. I might file away this lesson plan, because evidently these outages are just another part of living in rural Alaska.