Every time we do a practice lockdown at school I wonder how useful what we're doing might actually be. We have to close the blinds, get the kids to huddle in a corner and pretend no one is in the room. We are to ignore anyone knocking on the door and not to answer the phone in case it's someone trying to find out if there are actually people in the room - as if they couldn't tell! I wonder how we would even know to go into lockdown if the first place the loony with the gun goes is to the office where the public address system is and kills the people who could make that announcement. We do have a backup system of making phone calls to individual classrooms, but I wonder if it would be fast enough.
The events in Newtown, Connecticut, today reminded me that lockdown practice isn't just about making the disaster preparedness committee feel like they've done something. It's not about trying to completely prevent a tragedy because, honestly, there's no way we can do that - it's about minimizing it. I have no doubt that the person in the office who managed to call a lockdown today saved lives. I heard kids describing hiding in closets, huddling in the corner of a room and waiting while they heard gunshots until the police arrived to tell them to evacuate. They did exactly what they had practiced, except this time it was real :-(
I can't even begin to imagine how the children and staff go back to school after a tragedy like this. Despite all the loss it is clear that there were some very brave people there, both adults and children, who helped save lives. I'm not sure if this is a genuine quotation from Mr Rogers, but I like it anyway:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ― Fred Rogers
4 comments:
For me, the worst part of this tragedy is the very fact that, in all likelihood, not one politician will have the courage to take on the gun lobby in order to create meaningful, responsible and much-needed gun control laws. It is now coming to a point where these kinds of random attacks on the innocent by deranged and well-armed persons is a weekly event.
The war on terror (and terrorizing children and parents- as well as the public in general- is what it is) begins at home.
It is an ironic shame of a nation that in order to protect the children from psychopaths- who should be in some kind of incarceration, our schools will probably have to take the same measures used in maximum security prisons (automatically locking doors, for example).
Unbelievable! When Kay was smaller, I helped out with her class once a week and I am almost certain there was nothing at all to practice what to do when a loony with a gun comes calling. In fact to my knowledge the only case of a loony with a gun here was at Dunblane in Scotland in 1996. There wasn't one before and none since. I just can't understand why it happen so much in the US.
I was impressed when I heard of the procedures that were put in place, (lock the classroom door, get them in a corner, do not answer the door) and probably saved lives yesterday.
A truly awful day and hopefully it will jump start discussions on some kind of gun control.
Indeed. My Mum had a similar line of thought - stop sitting around feeling miserable and go and do something positive for somebody else.
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