I have a Facebook friend who is one of our campus police. Today he posted this status update: "Fire drills and tornado drills are great . . . but active shooter drills need to be added to our elementary and secondary school preparation activities."
You know, I couldn't disagree more. That we simply lie down and accept this as our new reality? No thank you. I'd rather spend my time fighting for tighter gun control laws and more mental-health-care funding. This gun-crazy society is not the society I want to be part of.
We had to go through "active shooter" training during a faculty development day a few semesters ago. We're just an hour north of Northern Illinois University, where five people were killed and 21 injured, in 2008. So, they told us how we should attack someone with a gun. How we should throw books at them (they figure we'd have books at hand --there are no books in my classroom, except those in student backpacks), and trip them up, taking the shooter down to the floor and incapacitating them.
What?! Guys, I didn't sign up for this!
I signed up to walk from lab table to lab table, engaging in a dialog about geology. Sometimes about late nights, or the latest movies. But I definitely did not sign up for hand-to-hand combat in my classroom.
I truly hope that the society of the future is not one where every person needs to be a trained soldier and wear a bullet proof vest each day, regardless of their career choice. Sensible gun control laws and removing the stigma from mental health problems seems like a much more reasonable solution to me. Which type of society will Emma be joining as an adult?
This post really resonated with me this morning; I've been trying to figure out exactly how to have this conversation with Adelaide. Yes, she's only six years old, but guess what? Six year olds are no longer safe in their classrooms. So while I don't want to freak her out, I've also decided I want her to be as prepared as possible in the event something like this should happen at her school, so we've been talking about hiding under desks, in closets, what gunshots sound like, how to be quiet when you're scared.
ReplyDeleteI know it sounds like I've turned into that crazy parent completely warping my child, but honestly, I was raised by one of the most paranoid men this side of the Mississippi, and while I won't throw out the "And I turned out just fine!" line, I will say I always feel like the most prepared person in a room for a catastrophe, because I'm always expecting something crappy to happen.
We already know how to respond to crisis situations, thanks to the Columbine madness a decade ago. What we need is PREVENTION. The kind that doesn't arm more citizens.
ReplyDeleteI agree; this should not be the new reality. We should be working instead to tighten up gun laws.
ReplyDeleteMy kids can't remember school without "black-out drills" (which began immediately following the horror at Columbine High School).
ReplyDeleteWhat I realized recently was that we'd never had the conversation about what to do if one of the kids was at a friend's house and someone showed off a gun. The fact I had to wait 2 days for an opportunity with everyone at the dinner table together made me terribly nervous.