School Safety should always be a priority: Does your school care for your safety?
I remember going to school and having to practice lock down drills to make sure that we knew what to do in case of a school shooter. Having to close and lock the door, either hide underneath the desks, or all go in one corner. All of us in the room waited patiently to be told that the drill was over in order to know we could leave the room or continue with the lesson. There have been a lot of school shootings that have happened in recent years regardless of putting schools on lock down, and many survivors still have fear and trauma from going through that. In American schools there are over 50,000 students who experience an act of gun violence annually in recent years.
The CDC defines safety as a comprehensive and layered approach to creating safe and supportive learning environments where students can thrive and grow. This definition encompasses various strategies and policies aimed at preventing violence, addressing health and safety concerns, and fostering positive student well-being. The CDC believes that everything that goes into school safety is the physical aspects of keeping students safe. However, I believe that more goes into school safety. I think that schools need to care more about the mental health of their students. In some cases that might mean allowing to have more contact with their parents in an emergency, and arranging for safe conversations with adults in the school who go through proper training to be called a mental health professional.
I have always been in a school where you can’t be on your phone at all. I remember going home after lock down drills and telling my parents about it and they would always ask, “Would you be able to go on your phone and text us if something were to happen?” and I genuinely didn’t have an answer for them because I wasn’t sure if school staff would allow that. I know that my parents were scared that there could possibly be an emergency where the school would have to go on lock down, and in that case the school would put out a notice and eventually let them know if I was safe. However, we would feel more comfortable if I was the one who let them know that I was safe. No one talks about how parents feel knowing that their child is in a school on lock down, whether it’s a drill or an actual threatening situation, it’s scary to not be in touch. I know my parents were always anxious knowing that we have to practice these types of drills because this means that we were practicing for if this were to actually happen.
In some schools there is a drill in which people run around the school building with their peers hiding and the person running usually has a fake gun in order to create the scene. This type of drill happens during a lock down drill when they are trying to prepare students for if there were to be a threat in the building they would know what to do. This type of drill is called an “active shooter drill.” I know that in my school we have different codes that let students know what is happening without freaking them out. In each classroom there is a sheet of paper that has what every code means. For example, code ‘blue’ is for if someone is hurt or injured and they don’t want people crowding. Code ‘room’ is the code for a lock down, it means there is a threat in the building and you have to stay in your room until you are told to leave. Lock down drills can be helpful and effective if done properly and talked about beforehand in order to not scare students around the school.
School shootings are a serious thing, and have been happening for years. There are many survivors of school shootings and many of them find solace in each other because they have shared a similar traumatic event. In an article by Katie Kindelan, she talked about the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting 10th year memory, they got an interview with one of the survivors who said, “We have that unfortunate shared experience and there’s some sort of wisdom that comes through that that you can’t get from the average person who hasn’t experienced something as traumatic,” Hegarty, now 17,” School shootings are not something to joke about because they leave people scared for the rest of their life, and in this case it led to their class being closer than ever before because they all had to experience the same thing as one another.
During the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting they had actually done an evacuation drill which has the students following their teacher to a safe location and not moving until told so. The people that were sadly lost in this shooting did not have enough time to practice the proper evacuation/lock down procedure. This was found out because the two classrooms were unlocked and there wasn’t forced entry and while the teachers did everything that they could to protect their students there wasn’t much they could do when Adam Lanza, the shooter, came in with a gun in hand. We will never know if more lives could have been saved if they had done a lock down drill instead, however we know it could have prevented the shooter from having access to a lot of students. Sandy Hooks actually has improved their school safety by having a more extreme and secure entrance. They also have cameras and an on-campus crisis team.
When a child or young adult experiences a school shooting it’s a causing factor of absenteeism because they’ve seen a lot. If schools cared about student’s mental health just as much as they do their physical students would feel more connected to the adults in the building and would feel safe to go to trusted adults in the building. If school safety was a priority we wouldn’t have to worry about children and adults being harmed.
