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Thu 26 Apr, 2007 08:42 pm
Boomer's thread reminded me of a dream I had a couple nights ago. I really don't remember much about it. I was being threatened somehow by someone and I was in a room searching for a gun that I thought was in there. Every once in a while I'd stop to listen to the sounds outside the room. I found the gun, the door opened, and I was faced with the prospect of shooting the person who embodied the threat. I woke up.
The super-odd thing about this was that we had a practice lock-down the next morning at school (I didn't know about it in advance). This is a procedure that is designed to protect the largest number of students and teachers in case of a threat in or at the school. I was an extra in a first grade classroom where many of the IEP students have been placed (this teacher is VERY good with them). Her example of a threat was a crazy rhinoceros and or a pack of wild, rabid dogs. I went through the motions of the lockdown procedure (lock the door, close the curtains, gather in the safe place, etc). Meanwhile, I was thinking about VA tech. I looked at the wooden door with it's glass paneled sides. All someone would have had to do to get in would be break the glass and open the door by reaching the inside handle (or break the windows from the outside).
It's a scary thought process.
I suppose it's our vulnerability, as much as anything else, makes us have these dreams. Plus, a realization that it could happen enywhere. My nightmares are usually on a personal level. If I have bad experiences with an untrustworthy person, and cannot practically avoid the person, I am apt to have bad dreams, featuring the very person.
We call that "shelter-in-place" in my district, and in addition to making sure the door is locked and not letting anyone in, we put a piece of masking tape on the window (in a true "shelter-in-place" emergency involving a chemical spill or related accident in the area we'd use the masking tape to seal the door [insert snide comment here]). We've got pretty thick, sturdy doors at my school, but the windows in the doors aren't bullet-proof.
Actually, we had a kid come to school with a gun last fall. About ten minutes or so after the start of the school day the administration announced a "shelter-in-place" drill. Most teachers didn't realize anything was amiss until about thirty minutes later when the drill still hadn't been called off. Luckily for me, that was my prep and I had just walked into the library for coffee. They also had a TV with regular cable there. About twenty minutes after the drill began, the librarian called me over to the TV and there was our school on CNN. We were the big news that morning until the shooting at the Amish school. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it was after 10 a.m. before they started letting kids leave their classrooms and use the restrooms (the lockdown began around 7:10 a.m.). The kid with the gun had fled the school into the surrounding neighborhood.
Just remember, at the height of those school shootings throughout the 90s (including Columbine), American school children were about 50 times more likely to be killed by lightning that to be killed at school. It makes for gruesome, sensational news, but we're much, much more likely to be harmed or killed by far more mundane causes.
On one of the Va-tech discussion threads, which have melded in my mind so I can't remember who said what where... someone posted a critique of the usual lockdown premise. Might have been BBB, might not have.
ossobuco wrote:On one of the Va-tech discussion threads, which have melded in my mind so I can't remember who said what where... someone posted a critique of the usual lockdown premise. Might have been BBB, might not have.
It's my impression that lockdown plans that schools and universities have in place are more for psychological soothing via the illusion of safety than for any real effect; you know, like giving folks the impression that hiding under one's desk or covering up with newspaper might protect you in the event of global thermal nuclear war.
Yes.
I should explain it wasn't BBB's (or whoever's) critique but a copy of an article about people who tested the reactions in variend circumstances.
That's the impression I get - hide under the desk and brush off the radiation. Great!
Mills, what age level do you teach?
I think in my daughter's school they only have earthquake and fire drills.
Isn't that enough!?! I think the lockdown type drills are new.
"Lockdown" also means that the majority of students and faculty are out of the way--not necessarily out of harm's way--but the potential for adding chaos to the original problem has been reduced.
littlek: high school
This is my fifth year teaching in the Vegas area, and they were doing lockdown drills when I got here. However, I did my internship, student teaching, and some subbing in the Flint, Michigan area and had never encountered it.
Incidentally, out here it's also used when the police bring in the drug-sniffing dogs for locker searches.
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