I'm still reeling from this week.
Correction: I'm still reeling from Friday -- the rest of the
week was fine.
Friday afternoon, however, my school went through something
called 4E Training -- also known as Active Intruder training.
It was terrifying.
All the teachers knew going in that it was going to be
rough. Asimov is one of the last school
districts in our city to go through it, so we'd heard stories from teachers in
other districts about what it was like.
Almost all used the word "intense" to describe it. We'd also heard from parents of kids whose
districts have done it already; one of
my close friends described a classroom where they keep canned goods as
potential weapons to throw at an intruder.
So when Friday afternoon rolled around, after a week of
dreading it, I had a lot of expectations about what this was going to be like,
none of them good. Unfortunately, the
reality was actually worse.
Like a lot of other teachers out there, I'm scared of school
shooters. It's that simple. The potential for an active intruder is
terrifying. I've read a lot on the
subject, including Columbine by David
Cullen, which dispels a lot of the misconceptions about what actually happened
that day, and while I feel better informed, I never feel comfortable. I
actually wrote about that book on a blog I run of book reviews, so you can find it here if you're interested. One friend
read it and pointed out, correctly, that it sounds like I don't quite feel
safe. I don't. I agree with my building principal that we
have a safe building and it's extremely unlikely to happen, but I also know
that there are too many possibilities that we can't possibly account for all of
them.
A school shooter is my worst nightmare.
The first thing we did on Friday afternoon, after getting
settled and the police officers introducing themselves, was watch a video about
active shooters in schools and public places around the country. And that video started with Columbine, and I
almost burst into tears.
I scrunched myself all the way down in my seat after that to
watch the rest of the presentation. My
hands were over my face, my feet were up -- anyone could look at me and tell
that I was uncomfortable, protecting myself.
I knew it too.
I think of myself as tough, so I wasn't happy with this
reaction, but I didn't quite care.
We walked through the 4E's, which are Educate (which we did
first), Evade, Escape, and Engage. As you can imagine, "Engage" is
the scariest.
From there, we broke up into groups and headed off into the
role-playing sessions, where we'd have to behave as if we were actually in an
active killer scenario. (FYI: I keep
saying active shooter because that's what I've been conditioned to think
about. In reality, the officers who
trained us called it Active Killer because there have be instances of attacks
with not only guns, but everything from knives to chainsaws. Thus, Active Killer.)
There were 4 exercises, designed to help us process the
4E's, and they got progressively worse.
The first was just to barricade the door. The officers emphasized that any time an
intruder spends trying to get at people is time he's not shooting, so the
harder the classroom is to get into, the better. We piled desks, threaded chair legs through
door handles, tied up the mechanism that holds doors open, anything we could to
keep that door closed and the classroom inaccessible.
It went pretty well.
The second gave us the option of either evading (barricade
the door) or escaping. The group in my
classroom was pretty set on escaping -- makes sense to get the hell away from a
shooter if you can. That is, until the
exercise started and the cop playing the shooter yanked the door open before
we'd had much a chance to move and shot a cap gun into the room.
Now, this is a cap gun, but it's a hardcore one, not like
those little ones kids sometimes play with.
It's loud, and frankly, it sounds like a real fucking gun went off. I screamed when he fired it into our room,
and I was not alone. The whole room
suddenly smelled like gunpowder and there was actual smoke near the door.
We barricaded that door so fast and so well that when the
officers came back and said the safe word so we knew the exercise was over, it
took a good five minutes to pull everything down and put the room back in
order.
Suddenly, this was a lot more real. Gunshots, even fake ones, will do that to
you.
Then came exercise 3, and this one was the worst because
this was the one where we practiced "Engaging" an active
shooter.
The officers walked in with a giant plastic bag of tennis
balls and started handing them out, explaining as he did that in reality, you
would use anything you could find as a potential weapon against a shooter:
books, staplers, markers, chairs, etc., anything you could find and pick
up. As he was explaining all this, the other
officer drifted into the back of the room, which a friend of mine noticed (I
did not).
Just as the office said that the exercise could start at any
time now that we all had our tennis balls, my friend piped up. "It makes
me really uncomfortable that he's (the cop) back here sitting down." The other officer reassured us, which drew
our attention back to the front of the room -- at which point the other office
pulled out his cap gun and started firing.
I'm shaking so badly I can barely type as I relive this
moment, and truthfully, I'm very close to tears.
When the first 'shot' went off, I screamed and ducked under
the desk I was sitting in. A volley of
tennis balls flew over my head, desks went flying, and that gun kept going
off.
He got off three, maybe four 'shots' before someone tackled
him, but by that point I, along with about 6 other people from our group of
about 15, was already sprinting down the hallway away from the room.
When it was over, we sat together with the two officers to
debrief. Many of us, like me, had
screamed and ducked first thing before the Flight or Fight response kicked
in. When several teachers admitted that
they simply froze, the officers explained that really, the reaction isn't
colloquially called Flight or Fight anymore -- it's Flight, Fight, or Freeze
because that's such a common reaction.
After a few minutes of discussion, a point came up: We were
all reacting like we were individuals.
None of us were reacting like we were teachers, responsible for 25-30 students in our classrooms, 25-30
kids who would have no idea what to do and who would have that same flight,
fight, or freeze response.
What did we do when we had students to care for?
I was the one who brought this up, and it led to a very
uncomfortable conversation with the officers in the room. They exchanged looks when I asked and both
then said: "I don't think I could live with myself if I ran out on a room
full of kids."
This wasn't enough, so I explained that I didn't think any
of us could do that -- we're teachers, we know our responsibilities, and that's
why I ask. So what did we do?
And again, they both said: "I don't think I could live
with myself."
They hedged. They
hedged both times, and while I don't like it, I fully understand why they
did.
Throughout this training, which took about 3 hours, we heard
the following statement multiple times: You can keep going even if you get
shot. Over and over, probably more than
a dozen times. You can keep going even if you get shot. You can keep fighting. You can keep engaging. Getting shot does not mean you are dead.
And then later: I don't think I could live with myself if I
ran out on my students.
These officers are trying to tell us what they, and everyone
else, cannot legally say: As the teacher, you are expected to give your life
for your students.
No one can say this to us.
The officers cannot say that I'm expected to throw myself at the shooter
if it happens in my classroom; all they can do is say that they couldn't live
with the guilt and let me do the emotional math.
They know as well as we do that the societal expectation is
that teachers will give their lives for their students, or be shamed forever
for it. And live with the guilt forever
for it.
It happens time and again -- it happened in Columbine, in
Sandy Hook, and in I'm sure many other school shootings that just aren't as
well known. Teachers sacrifice
themselves, and they are held up as heroes.
This is the part about this training that my husband
hates. He struggles so much with this
idea that I could be placed in this situation, that I could have to make
decisions like this, and I understand why.
I struggle with it too.
The back of the room looks different now, especially when
I'm standing in the front and teaching.
After the trauma of the third scenario, we were given a little
time to recuperate. In teacher terms,
that means the officers said "Relax for a few minutes until we're ready to
do that last one" and the teachers all responded by reviewing every little
moment of the last exercise and deconstructing our reactions, what would be
different, and how we'd handle it if it were real.
Not a lot of relaxation took place before the 4th
scenario.
The last practice was meant to put us in a whole-school
situation. We were told we could use any
of the 4E's and we had to make it past the 5-6 minute response time for police
to arrive at an active shooter scene.
At this point, I was so thankful that I was in a friend's
classroom. I spend a fair amount of time
there, working and grading, so it's a place at Herbert High where I feel
safe. I quickly found that that meant a
lot to me.
The announcement came over the radio (which we were using
like a PA system) that there was an active shooter in the commons/cafeteria. A long moment of scrambling ensued where we
figured out where that was and about half of my group decided that it was far
enough away to escape. The other half,
myself included, decided to barricade and wait it out.
The group that escaped made it about 20 yards before
spotting the cop roleplaying as the shooter and sprinting back into the room,
where we promptly upended my poor friend's couch to barricade the door. We piled up a mountain of desks, chairs, and
anything else, and I crawled under everything to turn out the lights.
And we waited. The
room was pitch black -- no windows to let in any ambient light. I couldn't even see my own hands in front of
my face, which was probably good because I could feel my whole body shaking
with adrenaline and fear.
Updates continued to come over the radio, including one that
said the 'shooter' was now upstairs from us.
A debate sparked: Should we run for it?
But we quickly realized that this classroom was right next to the
stairs, so the 'shooter' could quickly return.
We were safer waiting.
Not long after, a knock came at our door, and even in the
dark, I could feel everyone collectively freeze. What did we do??
The knock came again, and there was still no safe word. So we stayed where we were -- didn't open the
door, didn't respond, nothing. I felt
guilt washing over me: that knock could have been the shooter, but if this were
real, couldn't it also have been a student needing a place to be safe? A kid
who ran to her locker or to the bathroom and who was now locked out and in
danger?
The all clear and safe word came a minute later, and I found
out that I was not alone in my wondering -- everyone in the room was struggling
with the same guilt over that little knock.
When we debriefed afterward, this was our focus: What do you
do when a student has left the room?
And the officer came back with a true but horrifying
thought: How do you know that that kid isn't the shooter?
That rocked me back, and I could feel the whole training
really sink into my chest at that moment.
We, as teachers, want to believe the best from our students. We want to believe that they're good kids at
heart, that they would never do something like this, that they just want into
the room because they're scared.
But this officer knows the reality. He knows that opening that door endangers
everyone, and he knows that students (or former students) are most often the
ones to perpetrate shootings in schools.
It's his job to help us understand that while we want to believe
positive things about our students, the reality is much more ambiguous.
This became another thing they cannot, under any
circumstances, say, but it's true nonetheless: Do not open that door, because
one kid dying because they picked the wrong moment to use the bathroom is
better than an entire classroom full of students being killed.
They walked us through some other door-knocking scenarios to
try to soften that blow, including that we aren't even expected to open the
door to the police. After all, how do we know it's really them? A shooter could easily claim to be a cop to
get that door open. Instead, he explained that the police have safe ways of
getting into a classroom, so they fully expect to be told to take a hike in the
interest of keeping students safe. He
explained that if a kid is out of the room when something happens, you tell
them to go hide in the bathroom, or to find an open classroom, or even just to
get the hell out of the building. There
are options.
That doesn't change just how horrible it would be to keep a
kid out and find out that he or she was shot because of your decision.
This whole day was a lot to deal with. I've spent the weekend trying to process it;
my husband has noticed that I'll seem fine and then sink into myself, totally
silent and blank-faced, as my mind drifts back to it.
I think this was one of the worst experiences of my
life.
But I can't deny that the reality of it happening would be
far worse. I would rather be terrified
now but prepared than have no idea how to protect my students and myself if it
happened.
Yes, it was one of the worst experiences of my life, but it
was also one of the most useful. This is
a situation that I desperately hope I am never in, but if I am, I want to be
able to do something about it.
It's a horrific thing that we have to train for this -- that
by being a teacher, I am in this position. That by going to school, my students
are put in this position.
I've kept my little red wristband on since Friday, and I
don't know when I'll be ready to take it off.
"Red" was our safeword, but that band is also reminding me
that I have a responsibility in this situation.
It's reminding me not to forget what I learned, reminding me to be
stronger than I thought I was so I don't freeze, or cry, or run, should the
situation arise.
I don't know how to share this experience with my students,
nor do I know if I even should. Parents
don't want us talking about it, administrators don't want to scare kids, and as
we talked about with the officers, if students know our game plan, that game
plan becomes null and void should one of those students decide to walk into
school with a gun.
But now I know that I'm better prepared, at least, and as
terrified and shaky as I am still, that thought gives me some hope.
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