Henry told me that now they are practicing a new drill at school: if the fire alarm goes off, they treat it as a lockdown and they shelter in place, which means they lock the door and pull a shade over the window and keep very quiet and hide. Are you understanding this thing the children are practicing? When a fire alarm goes off, they STAY IN THE BUILDING AND DO NOT LEAVE IT, EVEN THOUGH IT MIGHT BE ON FIRE. Because maybe instead a shooter has pulled the fire alarm to get everyone to come out of their classrooms. Henry told me this is the “Special Challenge Mode!,” which tells me that his teacher is doing some good, good, good, heartbreaking work, and that she is managing to do it without crying, which was more than I was able to do just HEARING about it. Children in this country now have to be taught NOT to leave the building when a fire alarm goes off. Everything is absolutely fine.
Reading this made my eyes fill up. I am a teacher and did my first lockdown drill with my 1st grade class last year, and I was low level crying the whole way through (they didn’t see – honestly, the kids LOVED the lockdown drill and thought it was super exciting). But the thought of my little class gathered under the tables, keeping completely silent, whilst I turned off the lights and pulled down the blinds, still gives me shivers.
I was near the end of my pregnancy when Sandy Hook happened. I was stunned and wondered what kind of world I was bringing a baby into. Now my son is old enough to go to kindergarten this fall and I don’t know if I can do that. Realistically I don’t know that we could homeschool him, but with news of school shootings appearing what seems like every day I feel helpless and sad about enrolling him in a school. Living in fear isn’t any way to live, but I’m terrified.
My oldest is the same age. I remember my realization of what we had done – made this little everything who was going to be moving around in a world where he could get killed at school.
When he came home from preschool nearly three years ago and was telling me about his class hiding in the bathroom with the door locked “in case of bad guys,” I nearly died.
What the h is going on in our world?!?
I share your horror.
I’m hoping we may actually amass enough commitment to change to effect some, this once. I’ve written my (Republican) senators (and even my Democratic Representative a couple of times, though his actions and my views are pretty close). I’m planning to march on the 24th, possibly twice (the 2 larger cities near the small one where I live each have a march, currently scheduled at different times). I’ve given money to both (one of) my local marches (the other doesn’t seem to have a fundraising page yet) and the national march. And I’m agitating in various other (admittedly modest, but hopefully I’m one of many) ways.
I also ask myself from time to time whether I want just to emigrate from this crazy country, but that would be easier for me than for you, I think. I have a smaller (nuclear) family to uproot, my one sibling lives abroad, and my son’s one surviving grandparent is a dual passport holder who would not, I think, hesitate to relocate (to my destination or my brother/her son’s) if i moved.
I am a middle school counselor and I recently attended a mandatory training on how to use a tourniquet to stop bleeding, which included how to use the tampons in our first aid kits to plug bullet wounds. It was nauseating. I attend enough behind-the-scenes meetings to feel fairly confident in our school’s security plans; however, my children attend a huge high school that has a million entry points and I feel not-so-great about that.
Everything about this sucks. I will be marching on the 24th and I have NEVER marched for anything.
I am too. I’m driving all the way to DC from Indiana because ENOUGH ALREADY.
Our elementary school does run-hide-fight. The fight part is only taught to the 3-5 graders, I think, but is limited to throwing stuff at an intruder. The part that gets me is that the run part is basically the same as a fire drill. They are supposed to muster near a shed in the middle of the (very open) parking lot. We have told our kids if there was a real emergency that they should RUN and keep going. I don’t like the idea of a bunch of kids being sitting ducks in the parking lot. It is heart wrenching to think about, but I worry that the middle/high schools are much higher risk and we will be there eventually.
I remember reading after one of the many, many, school shootings, that we are teaching our children to rehearse for their deaths instead of taking action on guns.
My kids go to a school built in the 60s that is not at all up to current safety standards. That said, the new school nearby has all the best security and it feels like a prison.
My husband is a teacher and he has drills with a SWAT team every year where they learn how to fight off a gunman in their classroom.
Teacher. SWAT TEAM. Gunman. How is that a sentence I even typed???
I can’t believe this is our reality. Every year, every news story about another school…it makes me truly sick to my stomach. And now we send our 6 year old to Kindergarten. I think about the Sandy Hook kids All. The. Time. How are we not doing better for our kids??? Why are guns more important than they are???
I think your commenters are better than this, but come at me with your 2nd Ammendment bullshit and gun rights. I know I can’t take your guns away but dammit why can’t we make it just a little more of a LOGICAL process??
I am so sorry. But NOTHING gets me more pissed off than this issue lately. Our kids deserve better.
And now… Now I start to seriously consider whether I would lose my mind as a homeschool mom….
I’ll keep resist-botting my elected representatives, and march, in addition to thoughts and prayers that this system has got to get fixed.
The other day I was thinking about fake fire drills, driving home after my daughter told me about a fire drill at her school. I had to pull over because I could no longer see the road. Everything about this situation is horrifying.
Ugh I hate this so much. Yesterday mine had to spend their whole music period practicing what to do if a Code Blue happens there, and then also had to practice in the Cafeteria. They do think it is all fun and games which I appreciate but I am just weary of the whole thing. They have practiced so much and really I hate to send my kids to school to waste time. We were on vacation Mon and Tues and didn’t want them to miss 3 days so rushed back… So they could spend all day Wednesday practicing Code Blue? I also feel if we question this Code Blue stuff AT ALL the immediate reaction is “you don’t care about our children’s safety!” but there is a point where we go overboard with it. I was a teacher 10 years ago, and we practiced once a year. They told me they are going to have practice on the playground today and hide in the woods, which just seems dangerous to me? How do you keep track of 75 second graders hiding in the woods?
My kids have been doing these for years and it used to make me so sad and angry but there was a thwarted school shooting last fall (maybe in California– there are so many shootings and almost shootings it’s hard to keep track) and everyone knowing how to go into lockdown saved lives. So I still feel sad and angry but I also feel grateful for them.
We will be marching on the 24th. When I thought I’d sprained my ankle the other day, one of my first thoughts– before I even tried standing up– was how will I march in less than three weeks?
Every time I hear a loud noise in my building (fire alarm, kid banging on a locker, even loud voices), I am mentally mapping what I should do (where can I hide my kids, what’s our route to the nearest exit, what could I use to barricade/as a weapon?) and it takes me about 5-10 seconds to convince myself that it’s just normal middle school noises. Every. single. time. Yesterday there were 4 instances. I feel like the NRA is literally terrorizing me.
When I taught high school a few years ago we did a lockdown drill where we were supposed to practice our “hide” strategy. I asked one of my sweetest kids to look after a student with special needs during the drill, but I realized that if it were for real I wouldn’t want her to feel obligated at all to look out for anyone but getting herself out of there. I had to look into the eyes of a 16-year-old and basically say, “Hey thanks for helping out today, but in a real situation you could totally leave him to die an no one would judge you for it.” That sucked.
I feel physically ill thinking about this and everything related to it. My daughter was in preschool when Sandy Hook happened. One day she came home and told me in her tiny little preschooler voice how they were playing a hiding game at school and I basically sobbed all over her. She’s now in second grade, and recently she mentioned in an offhand way that they’d gotten lollipops while they practiced hiding and being silent. I still don’t think she knows what it’s all about. I wish I didn’t, either.
My daughter’s preschool recently did a lock down drill (WTF). They found an admirably non scary (for the kids) way of discussing it: when there is danger inside, we go outside. This is a fire drill, which they were doing anyway. When there is danger outside, we stay inside. In the bathroom. THREE YEAR OLDS all hiding in the bathroom.
This makes me so angry. Not to mention that a bill just passed in my state to allow teachers and school staff to carry guns at school. WTF?!? I will not send my child to a school like that, and I will be marching on the 24th in my very conservative area. We cannot allow this to continue.
From the day I started agonizing over what to do for Kindergarten (the choice was not obvious in our circumstances), friends asked about homeschooling. I considered it for a hot second, to which my own mother laughed in my face and said “have you met your daughter?” Homeschooling has never felt like a viable option for my incredibly extroverted and learns better from anyone than Mom kid. But, she’s in a public charter school and if they begin arming teachers (or even allowing staff to be armed) at her school, we will be homeschooling. I don’t know how I will work that out and meet her needs, but there’s no way she will be sitting in a classroom with a gun.
This makes me so sad to read. We live in Canada and it’s a bit different here. We do have lockdown drills, which is unfortunate, but necessary. I don’t believe we have gone to sounding the fire alarm and then staying in the building drill model- yet. It sickens me to think about. How terrifying for anyone having to practice this.
Here’s the thing- we are moving to the US this summer. School is all I think about for my kids there. Should we send them to school, or homeschool? I have 2 kids in high school and 1 in elementary. I think every day that we live there and I send them off to school, when I say goodbye to them for the day, will I be saying goodbye to them forever? I may end up losing my sanity by homeschooling, but that seems to be the safer choice right now. I wish you all luck with the marches taking place and hope it does something to start the change that is so desperately needed.
When I was a sophomore in high school, there was a shooting in my school cafeteria as everyone was waiting to go to first period. Although I lived in a fairly rural area with lots of hunters, I’d never heard a gunshot before and literally thought a lunch table had fallen over (two shots = two sides of a table hitting the ground to my naive ears). The guy standing next to me pulled me down a hallway while I watched a thousand teenagers scream, hide, run and panic.
Luckily, it wasn’t a mass shooting. (I can’t believe I just used the word “luckily” about this situation.) There was one shooter who had a handgun and one target. She (yes, *she*) shot the captain of the football team while he was in line getting his breakfast and left him to die on the lunch line floor all because he dumped her and called her a b*tch the day before. She then walked calmly, gun in hand (and right past me according to the guy who grabbed me) to the principal’s office where she set the weapon down on the desk and surrendered.
I bring this up because of the talk of arming teachers. My band director was also a police officer and worked as the school cop/security officer. She wore a uniform and a gun to school every day. By the time she reached the cafeteria, the shooter was long gone and all she saw was a thousand panic-stricken teenagers running every direction. Even if she *had* seen the shooter, what was she supposed to do? Fire her weapon across a crowded cafeteria with a thousand of us in her line of sight? The likelihood of her accidentally hitting an innocent teenager was obviously much higher than her having any luck taking down the shooter.
I went on to teach at the same high school and now my oldest is a freshman (at a different one). The thought of teachers with less training than my police officer/band director carrying guns is terrifying. *One* of my students has been smaller than me. One. Most of the boys are HUGE compared to me and any one of them in an adrenaline rage could get a gun away from me. And then what happens?
The whole thing is just terrifying. It literally makes me sick every time I think about it.
This is quite a story. I’m sorry it happened xx
It’s crazy that the kids are being taught to shelter in place during a fire alarm. The long-lasting negative effects of that type of learned mindset can turn out horrifically.
THIS!!!!!!!! How to we teach one set of standards at school (shelter in place) when we likely do NOT want that reaction at home to a fire/smoke detector going off (get out!) I absolutely understand why the schools much teach it this way but man….it’s all just horrifying.
I don’t think its time to homeschool bc the actual risk of a school shooting is so high-statistically it’s probably still very low. you may decide the trauma isn’t worth it, though.
I don’t at all mean that I think even for a second that this is an acceptable state of affairs. it is not. the fact that Americans continue to elect people who are willing to accept the regular slaughter of schoolchildren so that they can continue to accept money from a terrorist organization is so fucked up I can barely type it. the republicans are a pro hate party. they hate the poor, women, lgbtqia people, brown people, and they really despise children.
according to moms demand action, the most important thing to push for is universal comprehensive background checks, more than an assault weapons ban. I gather that makes more of a difference statistically. it also sounds like scary than “ban” for gun nuts, which maybe helps? in addition to calling your federal members of congress (if you are in a red state or have a gop rep, right now we are trying to keep the concealed carry act from passing), you can also harass your state electeds too pass more statewide gun control. indivisible has some good explainers, plus of course moms and Everytown.
but yes. unbearable. it’s unbearable. our country is so fucking broken. I really wish I could afford to leave. among other things, I don’t think this country will provide a safety net for me.
I know the risks are statistically low. But every time there is another shooting or an explosive device brought to a school it gets harder. Daycares to universities have all had shootings. I’m in Texas, and while my school district has not gone to being an armed campus, the next town over has. Lots of locals here take advantage of the open carry laws and most feel very confident that if there was a “bad guy with a gun” they’d be able to react and shoot back. But In a public space with fearful and panicked people, having more than one person shooting doesn’t make me feel better!
I’ve already had some conversations with my son about safety – how to look for a police officer/employee/responsible adult if he gets lost in a public place. We’ve discussed how to get out of the house if the smoke detector goes off. But when he goes to school, I want him to learn school stuff, not survival drills. Schools are now having drills for shootings. It’s sad but necessary. But only yesterday a student brought an explosive device to a school. In a shooting, kids would potentially hear the shots all over the building and could react. But an explosive could be one bang and no chance to react. Kids hell bent on destroying others are smart enough to figure out a way to do it and can adapt as they learn from previous shooters/attacks.
And I worry not only about a student bringing a weapon, but potentially having staff armed is a concern. If a student is wildly misbehaving and acting in a threatening manner, if a guard or teacher is armed, would the gun be drawn to subdue the student?
The idea of arming teachers bothers me for another reason too. While I believe many teachers would die trying to protect their students, and sadly many have, what do we expect from educators? They are supposed to give their lives for students and if armed potentially kill for their students? Please don’t misunderstand me. If my child was in a school shooting, and his teacher was an expert marksman who was able to wound the shooter and keep my child safe, I would be beyond grateful. But taking someone else’s life, even in self defense, or in the defense of a classroom full of children comes with a huge psychological price.
I feel like this is all just tearing our world apart – we are learning to view everyone as a potential threat and consider others as hostile until proven otherwise. I understand the impulse to gather your family together and be wary of outsiders, but it’s frightening. Our “leaders” and politicians are not taking enough steps to keep our children safe. I will be marching on the 24th as well. I’ve used resistbot to contact my elected officials, but I’ve only received form letters back thanking me for contacting them but stating that they are firm in their positions. That’s not good enough for me. Or my son. Or anyone else’s child. This is not how I want my child to grow up.
“We are learning to view everyone as a potential threat and consider others as hostile until proven otherwise” – yes, yes yes. It’s always been a line between being savvy with strangers and staying a good human, and it seems that our country is moving way back regarding this. I live in a “red county” in a blue state, and the attitude I see in my neighbors – that their right to a gun is more important than the safety of all of our kids – both saddens and scares me.
“we are learning to view everyone as a potential threat and consider others as hostile until proven otherwise.”
– this. I’m wondering how we create the situation – in public schools and spaces- where people, especially kids, are NOT seen as a potential threat. And when I say “we create”, I’m really talking about my neck of the woods, so to speak, because I think the pressure at the national level is good but the action at the local level is what will make the main difference.
oh, I totally get it, and if we actually start arming teachers (WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK HOW ARE WE EVEN CONSIDERING THIS) then I think we have a different conversation. I dont at all mean to downplay concerns. of course it’s terrifying. it’s unbelievable. unbearable. I only meant that statistically I don’t think you need to rush your kid out of school. but I also think we need to all be doing everything we can–not just marching but registering voters, showing up at MoC officers, donating, etc. I live in a blue state and run an indivisible group as well as am working on taking back the House, in part because of this issue. no one can be silent anymore.
Keep in mind a lot of conservative politicians HATE public schools and are happy to bleed them of supporters any old which way they can. There’s a secret silver lining to turning schools into prison-like environments, which is that most parents with means will choose not to send their kids there, and support for public schools will continue to evaporate. Similar to gun manufacturers who see these shootings as a money-making opportunity, conservative republicans in Texas REJOICE anytime a middle or upper middle class family leaves the public school system. It’s so messed up.
Maybe look into the group Moms Demand Action. They have lots of organized ways to address this issue from meetings to marches to things you can do from home.
My cousin was a student at Heath Middle School in the mid-nineties when a fellow student shot a Bible study group before school one day. One of her classmates who saw the carnage went on to have a daughter who is a student at the school in Kentucky that suffered a mass shooting earlier this year. I can’t imagine living through something like that and then having your own child go through the same horror.
Our school district had a suspected school shooter alert yesterday. Two 8 year olds thought they saw a man with a gun while they were coming in from recess and told someone (rightfully) and they went into real lockdown. No parents knew about it until it was all over and we got an automated call from the district explaining what had happened and which campus and that it was a false report. The seconds between the words “man with a gun on campus” and him identifying WHICH campus and also that it was false were the longest 8 or 9 seconds of my life and I thought I was going to have a panic attack right at my desk. I want to call and tell them that they should lead with the fact that it was a misunderstanding and a false report instead of having 2000 parents scream into the phone while waiting to find out if someone shot up their child’s school.
My son was in first grade during Sandy Hook. There is no going back form this. We will ALL be marching on the 24th, every last one of us. My now 6th grader, my 2nd grader, my mother and my (opposites attract) Republican husband. Less guns, more counselors. Less violence, more kindness. Less armed security, more empowered teachers. Now that my son is 12, he and I have talked at good length about how to behave in the middle of such an emergency and I feel pretty confident in his ability to run, hide, fight. That said, he has been scared to death to attend school at least once this year. The good (or bad?) news is that the horror of this reality is ours alone as parents. Our kids have never known any different. There is no innocence to have lost. It breaks me.
I’ve been trying to decide what I want to put on a sign, and I like Less Guns, More Counselors! Thank you.
I am an elementary school teacher and I had to watch a video last week that (literally) taught me about how I should keep a hammer and safety goggles in my desk in case I need to break a window to get my students to safety; informed me that I should use scissors or another sharp object to stab a shooter; and had child actors as young as appeared-to-be-6 involved a simulated shooting with a real-looking gun and sound effects. One part of the video involved a class of maybe 5th graders running from the school, running into the SWAT team, and putting their hands up while the police pointed automatic rifles at them. My emotions ranged from tears at the thought of these young actors doing this, to laughter at the absurd idea that I should teach my students to throw a laptop computer at an armed gunman. What world do we live in?!
The week before my oldest started kindergarten, I had to attend an ‘active shooter’ training at a different schoo (new job). I almost didnt send him. But I did, and I still do. After the latest shooting, the district we are in now posted cops in all the schools: as many as 4 the first week, and it’s down to one now. It came up in conversation the other day, my kid is still fairly sheltered from news adn wondered why the cops were hanging out inside. He said it was kinda creepy having the police watch them all the time.
I don’t know the answer(s) but I’m inclined to think school safety is a sympton of a larger problem with our society, and the only way we can move toward solutions, and safer classrooms, is more local involvement. But I’m pretty bad at that- even at interacting at the local park- but it appears it’s time for me to learn
When I taught, I had to do these drills with my young students. I still have nightmares about it. There is no way a school can protect itself from someone with an automatic weapon. To think differently is delusional. As someone wrote earlier, these drills are just teaching children how they can die. Nobody’s personal rights can override the psychological harm this does to our children and their teachers.