Three Actual Lockdowns
I am a teacher. So is my husband. It probably won’t surprise you that, between the two of us, we’ve been through three actual lockdowns. Not drills. Actual, bonafide, real-life, doors-locked, no-one-knows-what-is-going-on, saying-goodbyes-just-in-case lockdowns. One for Tim at his previous school. One for me before Tim was hired at my school. One for both of us this year. Only one involved an actual gun (mine), no one was hurt at any of these (unless you count the window on the bridge between buildings, which I don’t, but imagine walking up to school the next day and seeing a bullet hole 6 feet over and one story up from where you were sitting when it happened), but we didn’t know that at the time of any of them. And they were terrifying.
I’ve been writing about mass shootings in schools for a long time. I’m tapped out. I’m tired. I’m terrified. That isn’t to say I don’t feel safe at school; I do. But you always do until you don’t.
Being a teacher means I take stock of every room I’m in, looking for a place to hide kids if need be. Looking for possible vulnerabilities an attacker might take advantage of and thinking of how to mitigate those. Looking for items to use in an attack. This is just how my brain works, whether I’m in school or not.
Being a teacher means I need to think seriously about the fact that Tim’s classroom and my classroom are very close to one another in our building and, in an active shooter situation, our child would likely be left without both parents, because neither of us are letting kids get shot if we can help it.
Being a teacher means that, when I was in the parking lot and Tim was in his classroom during that latest lockdown this year, I was helping to shepherd kids away from the building and seeing videos and pictures of blood (they were previous pictures of a nosebleed, but no one knew that at the time) and hearing people tell stories of kids saying there was someone with a gun in the student center (there wasn’t, but we thought there was), I had come to terms with the fact that I might not see my husband alive again.
I am not comparing my situation to that of those who have been involved in mass shootings. Everything ended with no one hurt in these situations. There was no mass shooting. If you had to have a lockdown, these were the best possible scenarios. My experiences cannot compare with those of the families who have lost loved ones in these horrific tragedies.
But the threat is real, and it always is, every day, for everyone who works in a school, or who have loved ones who work in schools, or who have children who go to school. And we cannot pretend it’s not. Not anymore.
There was a year or so there where I was writing about gun violence and mass shootings in school almost monthly. I will never forget one of my coworkers who asked me, incredulous, why I wrote about this so much. Had I ever experienced gun violence? (Not directly.) Had I ever been a victim of a mass shooting? (No.) Had I known anyone who had experienced gun violence or been a victim of a mass shooting? (At the time, no.) So why did I care so much?
The fact of the matter was that I couldn’t fathom a world where everyone didn’t care about this that much, and I still can’t. Schools are supposed to be safe places of learning and growing, and these assholes had taken that away. I shouldn’t have to go to my job and assess what I could do or use in an active shooter situation, but I do. I shouldn’t have to practice several lockdown drills each year, but I do. I shouldn’t have to think twice about what security measures my kid’s daycare has in place, but I do. I shouldn’t have to know that our new main entrance has double locking doors and bulletproof glass, but I do. I shouldn’t have to say goodbye and I love you just in case during a perceived threat situation, but I do.
I don’t have any wise words or advice to share about how to make a difference or who to call or who to blame that hasn’t already been shared a million times over on social media. I just have these experiences to share and the same promise to make that I make every day: I will never stop caring. I will never stop fighting. I will never let any of those kids who walk through my door face any kind of violence. Not if I can help it.
Featured Image Credit: Warrior Goddess Training