chasing_silver

My first lockdown drill was in a class of Kindergarteners. In the country I come from, 4-year-old children go into a pre-K class, but in this class, we had five four-year-olds who were deemed "academically mature enough" to be there. Reader, they were not mature enough. Not by far. I was still dealing with weekly pants-wettings and daily meltdowns/tantrums when I was told we'd be practicing a full hold and secure.

"Just tell them you're playing hide and seek," said my assistant principal. "It shouldn't last long, they just have to know what's expected in case."

In case are the words people say when they really don't believe it'll ever happen. In case is always in the back of my mind, every time I go into work as an educational assistant in a public school.

The five four-year-olds in my Kindergarten class thought that turning out the lights and drawing the curtains was scary. They cried and one screamed until the teacher took him on her lap and smushed his face against her chest, because we were supposed to be quiet. The remainder of the children, all five-year-olds and some six-year-olds, stared at me with wide eyes.

One asked me: "Why are we doing this, Ms. H?"

I had just dashed back from shoving the class bookcase, a tall, heavy piece of furniture on wheels, in front of the classroom door, and I just stared back at her before ineffectually saying, "We're just practicing being safe, honey. It's no big deal, let's just stay quiet."

And she did, along with the rest of her classmates, scared into submission by the tremor I tried to keep out of my voice.

//~//

The United States of America is the top country in the world for school-related violence. As of 2024 alone, we have had 45 school shootings in this country. The majority of them have taken place on Kindergarten to 12th grade public school grounds.

We are probably the top country in the world for being the most prepared for an active shooter to walk into our public education buildings, and yet, it feels like we are never prepared enough. I shouldn't ever have to hold a child in my arms and hush into her ear to get her to stop crying. We should never have to see who can be the fastest to lock a door. And yet, every teacher, and every educator, and every parent, thinks about school shootings all the time.

All. The. Time.

My current job is as a 1:1 educational assistant, or paraprofessional, for a 12-year-old medically fragile boy with physical special needs. He has a rare condition that means he uses a wheelchair and can't move himself easily from one place to another. He can't transfer himself in and out of the chair, yet, and much of my day is helping him with physical activities like writing, feeding, and toileting.

Earlier this year, we had to run his safety plan, as his current advanced classes mean he's upstairs with the eighth graders this year. He's too small and fragile to fit in the evacuation chair that is used for wheelchair users when the elevator doesn't work, so the safety plan is for me to carry him down the stairs to safety.

Being in charge of one child's life in an emergency keeps me up at night. He weighs 45 lbs. I can easily carry him, but what I can't do is keep hold of him and not fall if he's being jostled by frantic thirteen-year-olds who are taller than me, dashing down the stairs, so the plan was that he stay upstairs until the entire floor was evacuated, and then I would carry him down.

I said, "And if there's an active shooter situation?"

"You'll just stay there until someone rescues you, I suppose. You'll never get out without being seen."

Every eighth grade classroom has large windows on either side of the door, and nothing to block them with. I know. I've looked. We'd be seen regardless.

His math teacher looked at me uneasily. "I would rather try to get them out first if we can."

"We can't. They'll be seen, and it's not safe."

Last year, we were locked down in his math class because a student decided he was going to come into school with a knife. He was known to be pretty severely emotionally disturbed, but no one had foreseen him missing six days of school and then returning with a weapon. You could hear his ranting and raving in the hallways, and the occasional scream as he was thwarted again and again by the crisis team and the school resource officer.

My student is never the problem in these situations. He does exactly as he is told. I placed him in the corner of the room and told him to sit still and keep quiet. He did as I asked. Where we had an issue was with two of his classmates trying to escape the classroom to get out of the building as fast as they could before they got hurt.

What do you do when you have the best safety plan in the world, but it doesn't take into account the fact that humans have human emotions and reactions? The math teacher was in tears as she begged the girls to come away from the door and please, please be quiet. The whisper-screams could have peeled paint off the walls as they argued in front of the blocked door, but, defeated, the girls eventually sat back down. The all-clear sounded five minutes later.

My student looked up at me. "If you have to, you could just leave me. You have a family, too."

I looked back at him. "One thing I will never do is leave you."

//~//

The USA's educational workforce doesn't get enough credit for the daily decisions we have to make to keep this country's children safe. And yet, I can't brag about it - the way we, like police officers, other first responders, snap into action. The way that we will throw our bodies in front of students if it means that their lives will be spared.

I work with my student and a self-contained class of kids with special needs. I would and have done things that are beyond my job description to keep them safe. I have carried a boy down a flight of stairs, knowing full well that I can't run fast enough to outrun a shooter, to escape a fire, but knowing also that it's my job to ensure that he gets out if I can possibly get him there. I have run after one of my intellectually disabled students to stop him from getting to the doors and running out into the parking lot, because he doesn't know that the cars can't always stop in time and that the road in front of the school is extremely busy. And I have been hit, kicked, and bitten by an autistic student in a rage because it's better that she take it out on me than on her classmates, and all of the students I mentioned are entitled to and deserve an education that is least restrictive and most of all, safe.

And yet, as I watch the coverage of the latest school shooting in Georgia, I think to myself:

When do we move away from in case and into never again?

When do my excellent training and safety consciousness become a brag and not the truth?

This has been an entry for therealljidol. The prompt this week is the title, "It Ain't Bragging If It's True". I am so sorry to have had to write this, but as an educator on the front lines, it becomes harder and harder to sweep the systemic problem we have with school-related violence under the rug.

Thank you so much for reading and voting.