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One of the saddest facts I’ve faced as an educator of over 20 years is that our current students have never been through a school year where they weren’t asked to participate in a lockdown preparedness drill. Our annual practice took place last Thursday. Teachers presented a slide deck outlining procedures students could expect to follow in the event of a lockdown of the school. These procedures are developed in partnership with local agencies as part of the county’s Big Five protocols.
After reviewing best practices around barricading doors and behavior expectations in the event of an emergency, our students exited classrooms and proceeded to their designated rallying points for their classes on the football field. It takes about 20 minutes to evacuate the campus and account for all students. Students from our Health Careers Academy, trained in emergency response, help facilitate the activity. Once we’ve double-checked all of our items, I thanked the students for their orderliness and cooperation and dismissed them for lunch.
I’m fairly certain most of them went about their day with little second thought about what kind of event might precipitate a lockdown like the one we practiced. Others, we know, are very strongly affected by the idea of gun violence on campus. I know I am. Take some solace knowing that it serves to put some nerves at ease to know we have detailed safety procedures to follow in the event of something terrible occurring on our campus. We work with amazing Police and Fire Departments in Redwood City. We have a veteran staff. Students are in good hands here. Nonetheless, we all lose sleep thinking about the possibility of an armed intruder, which is just a part of life in America 2023.
To help provide even more peace of mind, we partnered this year with the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation to provide students access to a 24/7 tip line, live chat capabilities with a human respondent, and real-time communication with school and local law enforcement when urgent health and safety matters come to light. Students were trained in how to use the platform in Flex period during the first month of school. I have been impressed thus far with the maturity and care students have shown in accessing the resource.
When I hear folks from previous generations talk about practicing for nuclear attack in their classrooms, it’s generally shared humorously or with nostalgia. I can’t imagine talking in the same manner about lockdown drills one day in the future. We’ve all seen too much. I would be happy simply to talk about them in the past tense. I know our students feel the same way.
Have a great week!
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