When I was 22 and a first-year teacher, a Creative Writing student told me in the middle of a lockdown that it was my job to stand in front of the door so I would get shot first.
Then one of my students decided to hide in a cabinet so he could bang on its door.
I was proud of myself for not visibly jumping.
I had absolutely nothing productive to say.
That day, I had a 45-minute class that was on lockdown for at least two hours. We received no information from our administration other than confirmation that it was not a drill.
We watched Freedom Writers – not because it was meaningful or useful, but because Creative Writing was my third prep and it is nearly impossible as a first-year teacher to write curriculum for three different classes and be as over-prepared as you need to be to make sure you have enough material to fill each period, let alone deal with unforeseen contingencies.
Let’s be clear: School shootings (and the accompanying lockdown drills) are no longer unforeseen contingencies. This is my ninth year as a classroom teacher. When I heard about the Stoneman shooting, I barely blinked.
Why am I so desensitized? Here is a by-no-means-comprehensive list of the school shooting related incidents that have happened to me during the past nine years:
*We had a lockdown on a Tulsa high school campus because a student got in a fight at a party over the weekend with a group of people who then showed up at school during the day and fired shots toward campus.
*The teacher across the hall from me at a Durham high school had a detailed conversation with his students about how he would stand by the door and beat any intruder over the head with a stapler.
*I failed to lock the door during a lockdown drill because I thought it was already locked. We were the last classroom on the hallway. It took at least 20 minutes for administration to come and check the door. At that point, all my students were either behind the teacher desk or huddled under a counter, but they were restless and the whispers were starting to grow. The principal opened the door and yelled, “Do you want to die?” at my kids. He then sent me an email requesting that I go to the office and sign a letter formally reprimanding me for not taking the drill seriously enough. He never bothered to talk to me about it.
*I had multiple conversations with my students (at the same school mentioned above) about what we would actually do in the event of a school shooting: I reminded them that our window opened onto the gym roof and that we could get from there to the parking lot. I told them I expected them to run.
*During summer training, we watched a video produced by the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office in which police simulated an active shooter incident. Police in Durham completed drills at school sites each year. Teachers were never invited to participate.
*After watching the aforementioned video, we had a conversation about protocol in which we had a prolonged debate about our system of red and green cards. We were supposed to slide a green card under the door if everything was OK in our room or slide a red card under the door if everything wasn’t OK. One teacher wanted to know what would happen if an intruder was in the room and forced you to put out a green card. She asked if she should tear the card to indicate that something was actually wrong. More than one person in the auditorium responded by saying, “Girl, you would already be shot.”
*A Creative Writing student cried in class while presenting a poem about a lockdown that happened on a San Jose campus. It had been an entire year since the incident.
*I completed multiple lockdown drills at a California charter school in which we taught students how to throw tables and chairs up against the door to form a barricade and then turn desks on their side to form mini-barricades to hide behind. We discussed what objects could be used as weapons to throw at an intruder. I had multiple students volunteer to hide behind the bookcase with me and be the first to start throwing things at anyone who might come through the door.
This morning I asked our administrators if we could hold a lockdown drill. I am currently located at a charter school which consists of a row of trailers on the side of a traditional district school. The main school campus has an intercom. We do not. I was told that our administrators are planning to hold a joint drill in the next few weeks and that they are trying to figure out if our new fire drill alarm system could be used during an active shooter incident. I told my students that there was sad news out of Florida and that their administrators were planning to hold a joint drill in the next few weeks. I did not remind them that we don’t have a working intercom. I told them we have a plan to keep them safe.
In my journalism class this morning, we did not watch the videos Florida high school students posted to social media. We didn’t read think pieces about how Australia offers a test case in how to use gun control to prevent mass shootings. We didn’t talk about the incredible hold the NRA has on American politicians or discuss the ways in which some journalists publicly called out that hypocrisy.
Perhaps we will do that tomorrow. Perhaps I will decide that it’s enough that today I told students about the Koshka Foundation, an advocacy group formed by a high school friend of mine who was injured during the shooting at Virginia Tech.
I am tired. I am angry. I did not react particularly well when my administrator suggested this morning that I take time to “process.” (I did tell students that their mentors were available to talk to them.)
Writing has always been the way that I process. I’m not pretending that this post says anything that other teachers haven’t already said. I simply want to say that teachers go to work EVERY DAY knowing that it really is our job to put our bodies on the line to keep our students safe.
Knowing it’s my job to make sure students return safely home to their families, I expect the following:
*A key to my classroom (this isn’t a given, especially when you’re serving as a sub)
*A safety plan that teachers and students know and are given an opportunity to practice
*Absolute seriousness from students and colleagues during said practice
There is no perfect plan that will guarantee survival in the event of a school shooting. One best practice is called “Run, Hide, Fight” – it’s not fool-proof, but it acknowledges that cowering in a dark, silent classroom is not the only option.
I do not intend to die in a classroom. I don’t want to ever have to call a parent and apologize for failing to protect their child. I know that if a shooter ever actually attacked my campus that I could find myself in the line of fire. I know that it could prove impossible to protect all my kids.
The most frustrating classroom discussion I’ve ever had is the day I had to explain to a student that she was wrong to argue that Newtown resulted in stricter gun laws. The opposite happened.
If it frustrates you to live in the only developed country in the world in which mass shootings occur on a regular basis, I encourage you to contact your lawmakers. Vote. Advocate for common-sense legislation that is supported by the majority of American citizens (you know, the ones who don’t want their children to die at school because it’s absurdly easy for Americans to obtain automatic weapons).
Keep the following in mind: Teachers are underpaid and school children are under-served. Support services have been gutted. Students do not have access to the mental health services they need and deserve. We can do better.
Do we want to?
Or is this just the debate of the week?
I will be in a classroom long after #parkland and #stonemanshooting and #browardshooting fade from the Twitter trending page. So will my students.
If we really want to do better, we need to acknowledge that this will be a long, hard fight. I hope we’re up for that. In the meantime, hug your kids tight and thank a teacher.
p.s. Any fool who tries to tell you that this problem could be solved by arming teachers needs to spend a week in an actual school. If you walk away from that believing that adding guns to the mix is a good idea, you should walk straight into a doctor’s office and get your head examined.
p.p.s. This student reporter is my new hero. Hence the featured image on this post.
Elizabeth DeOrnellas 