In a country where school shootings are disturbingly common, and with significant work ahead of us to prevent them going forward, school active shooter drills feel like a necessary evil. However, while we want students to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, the impact of the drills themselves are often overlooked.
Active shooter drills can be emotional, stressful events. Over the course of my time in school in the 2010s, I watched as they became more realistic, and more frightening. My elementary school referred to them as “shelter-in-place drills,” and they were announced over the loudspeaker with the code phrase, “Mr. Fox has entered the building.” By middle school, a police officer playing the role of a shooter would attempt to rush into a classroom, and students would have to practice barricading the door with desks, or fighting them off with textbooks and school supplies.
Some older adults who didn’t experience drills in their own childhood might not understand the hypervigilance today’s students feel they must exercise at school. That’s why mom and therapist Dr. Han Red shared her middle school daughter’s experience with active shooter drills, in the wake of the Abundant Life Christian School shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, that left a student and teacher dead.
“I think a lot of us older folks don’t even realize exactly what’s being taught and normalized to our kids,” Dr. Red wrote in the caption of her Instagram post. “So here it is, this is the level of detail and thought that our kids go through to try and individually stay safe from [gun] violence.”
Dr. Red asked her daughter Olive to share what her school principal told the students while preparing for her school’s active shooter drill.
“They said that if the principal goes on the intercom and says, ‘Okay, guys, you can be set free now,’ to not actually go, that the police have to come and say that you’re free, and they have to come to your classroom to personally escort you out, because if the principal said that, they might be held at gunpoint,” Olive said.
Sounds more like the plot of a blockbuster action movie than something an 11 year old should have to consider in their classroom, right?
Students in today’s schools have to be prepared for anything, no matter where they are. So what are they supposed to do if they’re in the bathroom?
“If you’re in the bathroom, then you should run out and bang on classrooms and say, ‘I’m a student.’ If they don’t let you in, you to have to run back and stand on the toilet and just be quiet,” Olive explained.
So, a tactic to hide from villains in an ‘80’s slasher film is just something teachers have to tell students. Cool.
Dr. Red asked if students should consider escaping by jumping out a window, and Olive explained they shouldn’t, in case there were ambushers waiting outside.
Then, she asked Olive if she had a particular period at school when she would most, or least, want a shooting to happen, based on her chance of survival.
“Yeah, everyone talks about it,” Olive explained. “It’s a common conversation topic.”
And her qualifications for a “good” period?
“Well, like the room with the best hiding spots in it, and a good place in the school, like a hidden room. Also, when most of the people are kind of smart and wouldn’t scream,” she said.
“So you want classmates who aren’t going to blow up your spot,” Dr. Red explained.
“This is the type of trauma and hyper vigilance and fear that has been completely normalized for our students, our children, and this is what we’re teaching our kids instead of pushing for gun control,” she said.
Commenters expressed empathy for students in Olive’s position, and horror for the state of gun violence in the country.
“I graduated high school in ’22, and what she said brought back so many memories of assemblies and lectures,” one user said. “I remember we would ask our teachers, ‘what if the shooter was a student and they know where our hiding and meeting places are?’ The answer was always 🤷”
“The fact that we are giving low level military training to kids to save their own lives because we won’t is disgraceful,” another commented.
It’s important for students to be prepared, but when the preparation itself is so horrifying, the time for tackling the root causes of school violence seems long overdue.
